In a new installed system with Debian 9.6 $ dpkg -l will list only packages with 'ii' state and a couple of 'rc'. But if i run: $ dpkg -l w* i will get a dozen also of 'un' packages. So i dont understand the logic of altering the output when i use a pattern . I would expect to see only 'ii' packages starting from the letter 'w' . Also i dont understand why in a new system dpkg would know anything about uninstalled packages! alexandros