What are your must-have packages?

the magnificent fuck

• ZSH (Shell)
• Ripgrep (alternative for grep)
• Bat (alternative for cat)
• Exa (alternative for ls)
• Fd (alternative for find)
• Fzf (fuzzy finder)
• Micro (editor)
• VS Code (editor)
• Jq (sed for JSON data)
• Mercurial (version control system)
• TortoiseHG (graphical interface for Mercurial)
• Terminator (terminal emulator)
• KeepassXC (password manager)
• CopyQ (clipboard manager)
• Vivaldi (browser)
• SchildiChat (matrix client)
• RSS Guard (feed reader)
• FileZilla (FTP / FTPS / SFTP client)
• Double Commander (file manager)
• Hugo (generator for static websites)
• DBeaver (database tool)
• And maybe a few others that I can't think of right now.

I see a lot of the good ones are already mentioned. But I can't use a linux system for more than an hour without 'thefuck' installed

Depends on what the machine is for.

For everything:

• vi/vim
• ssh & sshd

For everything except firewalls:

• C, C++, Perl, Common Lisp, Scheme programming tools
• lynx
• wget/curl
• git
• ksh (on *BSD)
• telnet (yeah, there's equipment that still uses telnet out there)

For a desktop:

• Emacs
• xterm
• GNU plotutils
• TeXlive
• X11 utilities (xcalc, editres, etc.)
• Atmel and Arduino toolchains
• xpdf
• KDE
• KiCad
• GIMP
• Inkscape
• Firefox
• Chromium
• Kerbal Space Program

• git
• vim
• openssh
• openssl
• fail2ban
• curl
• byobu
• webmin (to give limited access to non-Linux help desk technicians)

• Kitty
• fish + all the shell builtins
• LunarVim (Neovim)
• git + lazygit
• openssh
• npm
• cargo
• docker

Edit:

• wget
• httpie
• tar & (un)zip

Am I really the first.

Nano!!!!!!

• htop
• docker
• zsh
• tmux
• ssh
• git
• rsync
• curl
• dnsutils
• jq
• nodejs (managed via fnm)

• jq
• vim
• ag (silver searcher)
• kubectl
• k9s
• oh-my-zsh
• go
• xclip
• openssl
• tcpdump

As boring as it is, gcc.

• docker (What, you never wanted to use a optimized version of cmatrix that uses only 512KiB of ram while barely scratching your CPU?)
• foot
• brave
• (on docker) btop, cmatrix, lynx

• neovim
• alacritty
• zsh
  • oh my zsh
  • starship (promp)
• zellij
• btop | htop
• ripgrep
• fd-find
• exa
• fnm (nvm alternative, since nvm starts too slow for me)
• yt-dlp
• bat (batcat)
• the usual base-devel / build-essential

One that I didn't see on here that I've added to my list

• tldr
  • simplified man pages with common example commands.-

If on desktop

• distro-box
• yakuake

linux-headers

• exa
• ripgrep
• tree
• difftastic
• fzf
• git
• neovim
• zsh
• starship
• direnv
• bat

• zsh+ohmyzsh
• tilix
• neovim
• fzf
• exa
• pv
• htop+iotop+nethogs
• iperf3
• nc
• socat
• nmap
• python3
• ansible
• lolcat

Every time I setup a new system, I always install these:

• vim
• zsh
• git
• rsync
• tmux
• mosh
• btop
• autossh
• mc
• direnv
• asdf-vm

If the system is a desktop/laptop for personal use, then I'll install these too:

• virt-manager
• vscode
• firefox
• filezilla
• mpv
• yt-dlp
• kdeconnect
• onlyoffice

Desktop:

• distrobox
• brave
• flatpak
• neovim
• nix
• fish
• tmux

base-devel

• neovim
• fzf
• ripgrep
• Firefox
• git
• lazygit
• wezterm
• zsh

To add to all great comments here I have one that I’ve used for ages and not seen mentioned here: lftp

It supports many protocols for ftp like over ssh and allows for shaky connections with resume and back in the days when this was more common I used to just run it in the background to download huge files that took days to download and it would gracefully just reconnect/resume/retry until done.

• Tmux
• NeoVim
• Git
• FZF
• Fish
• ssh Lots of others, but these are the day-to-day

A few from the top of my head:

• git
• neovim
• nix (package manager)
• mpv + yt-dlp (stream music from yt with --no-video argument)
• unbound
• caddy (quickly spin up local web servers with https)

Edit: almost forgot, I've been using zsh + znap package manager and loving it.

Adding to that:

• neovim for workstations
• curl
• wget
• zsh

Edit: So essentially for me, I forgot to include it: vim, my beloved, always and for ever

Permanently Deleted

In order of use:

• Firefox
• Nvim (with a slightly modified kickstart.nvim)
• SSH
• Minicom
• Python3
• Git
• CopyQ
• Curl
• Wget
• Tmux

I don't see enough of these here:

• fzf
• z (or zoxide)

Check them out

Stuff that I insist on regardless of platform (that is, I install these even onto Windows systems if I'm forced to use them):

• Pale Moon (web browser)
• Claws Mail
• GIMP
• vbindiff (command-line hex editor + diff utility for binary files)
• mercurial
• perl

Stuff that I require only on Linux systems for desktop use:

• Pan (yes, really, I still use a Usenet newsreader on a daily basis)
• qemu
• conky
• Aqualung (music player—I like odd software)
• Inkscape
• Scribus
• PySol ;)
• rdesktop (less a favourite than a regrettable necessity)
• various TDE built-ins: konqueror (as file manager only), kedit, kate, konsole, ark

• tmux
• screen
• autossh
• mosh
• rsync

• ardour
• kdenlive
• vscode
• kdenlive
• gnome
• xmrig
• fish
• element
• telegram

• vim
• git
• rust (via rustup)
• codium
• pycharm ce
• nu (shell)
• starship (shell prompt)
• firefox
• sway
• alacritty
• python
• iproute (or whatever package has ip in distro)
• keepassxc
• gcc/g++
• make
• podman (or docker)

I always made sure my laptops had tlp installed. Now it seems openSUSE has cpu power profiles daemon or something by default, which it says conflicts with tlp when I tried to install it. So, I'm giving that a shot.

The first 3 things I always add after a fresh install: aptitude emacs (-nox for servers) tree

Then it depends what the machine is for.

Lets make a list!

1. zsh
2. tmux
3. htop
4. ranger
5. helix (if i can get it)
6. fzf
7. fd-find
8. python-pip

Firefox, only office and spotify. That's all I need.

• asciiquarium
• cowsay
• tty-clock
• mc
• nano
• btop
• htop
• vscode
• vivaldi
• mariadb
• apache
• php
• python3

• alacritty
• neovim
• tmux
• vifm - terminal file manager with vi keybindings.
• zathura - pdf reader with vi keybindings.
• inxi - prints information about your hardware.
• tldr - cheat sheet for common commands
• qalculate - the most powerful calculator I've seen. There are qt, gtk and cli versions of it.
• moreutils - collection of tools. My favourite is vidir, it opens directory structure in your terminal text editor, so that you can rename multiple files easily.

Must have p7zip and p7zip-gui

Permanently Deleted

• tmux
• emacs
• okular
• pipx
• calibre
• lutris
• hakuneko
• yt-dlp
• git

yay

McFly, can't live without it anymore.

Since I'm not sure where to ask what is probably a basic question, what's a Linux package?

• vim
• bashtop
• cmus
• ghidra
• jq (pretty print Json)
• screen
• hexedit
• python3 with pwntools
• GCC, g++, make & libc6-dev
• gdb with pwndbg
• alacritty

• socat
• ngrep
• vim
• pv
• htop
• jq

Generally, everything else I need is there by default depending on the distro.

Home workstation-wise.. maybe:

• meld
• kdenlive
• openscad
• Qtvlm, zygrib and OpenCPN
• gimp extras
• golang
• Inkscape
• Wireshark
• audacity

• ranger
• openssl
• aria2
• fzf
• nitrogen
• w3m

• fzf
• git + lazygit
• neovim
• ranger
• cargo
• btm
• starship
• tmux
• fish

Suicide linux

Not to duplicate some of the entries, I will keep it short

LF file manager (seen ranger mentioned but no lf)

Ytfzf for finding yt videos and playing them in MPV without the need of web browser

Kpat.

neovim, zsh, firefox, vlc, mpv, zsh plugins for autocomplete, ripgrep, zerotier vpn,fzf, pip3, htop, i am not sure what else

• OpenDoas
• Emacs
• Git

Permanently Deleted

tmux kak / vim ssh gcc python3 curl nc

'taint much, but I get by

In addition to what was already mentioned: reptyr

None of those are must-haves...

Shouldn't you have posted this to /c/archlinux or other meme-distro communities?