How can I wipe all files and software not part of Ubuntu?

Question

I have a dev machine that I use npm and node on. I have been having trouble with permissions issues and repeatedly tried uninstalling and working with nvm and other stuff. I'm not really looking for ways to solve that issue and would prefer to start from a clean slate. Is there a way to wipe everything from my system?

Answer 1

You can find the packages you installed with the terminal command:

comm -23 <(apt-mark showmanual | sort -u) <(gzip -dc /var/log/installer/initial-status.gz | sed -n 's/^Package: //p' | sort -u)

Removing those should bring you pretty much back to the install as far as packages are concerned. Of course, this wont fix permissions or remove anything you installed outside the packages system.