With so much freedom to download what we want I’m worried that I & maybe others who are more used to a out-of-the-box OS configuration (& so never really had to think about) may not even know exactly what it is we’re missing…
So what are some important applications you couldn’t go without that most people would often over-look as being vital to the system?
Thank you for your time (꒪ˊ꒳ˋ꒪)ꕤ
Use trash instead of rm …you can thank me later.
extra/trash-cli 0.23.2.13.2-2
Command line trashcan (recycle bin) interface
I’d say:
noisetorch - noise cancellation
fish - terminal shell with history and auto-completion
dolphin - I know it comes as part of KDE but I don’t use KDE anymore, yet I still decided that dolphin is essential for me. It can be as simple as any graphical file manager or be transformed into a full media manager, comparable with XnViewMP or Ad0be Bridge. I use it as my main media manager while using Nemo as my default file manager.
syncthing and/or resilio sync (rslsync in AUR) - file synchronisation and versioning across all your devices. I use both depending on what files I’m syncing.
I’ve used a lot of temperature monitoring since calculating for astronomy.
$ sensors
$ watch sensors
$ sudo pacman -S xsensors
A minimal network information tool for the connection to BIONC servers, mail, etc (maybe watch the bad ones) 
$ ss -ar
-changing, updating, creating passwords: the magnificent cli program pwgen is my go-to. likely overlooked,
-the beauty and simplicity of gnome-terminal probably also overlooked. not flashy but if runs my endeavour
-non-cloud password managers also overlooked: keepassxc a little busy for me but solid.
-if gnome-terminal runs the joint underneath then nemo file manager runs it on top. it’s add on extensions are quite amazing (fileroller, pictureresize, etc) too
I will try it and likely thank you letter. rm -rf filename is getting old. now do cp and mv 
I feel as though these two topics are quite different. Since, applications recently discovered covers all kinds & this one specifically is asking about applications most people wouldn’t even think to download since they’re so used to them just being there in most cases…
GNU LilyPond
It is often overlooked in favour of MuseScore, but MuseScore is absolute rubbish.
Sure, the learning curve is a bit steep with LilyPond, and getting started with MuseScore is quite easy, but that’s the only thing MuseScore is good at: producing waste easily.
Octopi
This topic really depends on use case but for me krename is essential (I think XCFE has a similar program)
Fun topic!
One little program that I find myself using surprisingly often is pdfarranger. Just what it says on the tin: a simple drag-and-drop GUI for combining, re-arranging, and trimming PDFs by the page.
Another little favorite is Peek, which I may have learned about on this forum, actually. It’s a screen-recording utility which lets you capture gifs and .mp4s with the ease of a contemporary screenshot utility.
Since the question is based on using a DE out of the box, which DE one installs matters.
I use KDE, but don’t like Gnome, and although the KDE calculator is great, I often do many calculations for my business, and so when using a calculator I often have to use results from a few calculations back, but if you hit [clear] in kcalc the contents are gone. So you may need to keep a few documents open to copy a number from a file, like a purchase order you totaled up a few minutes or hours ago, or measurements of geometry and past it back into the calculator to now add or subtract it to a total, possibly in another document, to extrapolate a new measurement, figure the tax, or something… and well the more cross referencing the more fetching numbers, and the easier to introduce errors.
Well for that I found that Gnome calculator has a great feature: It keeps a history in the window:
Now you can click on a calculation, or result in the history to pop it into the cleared work area, or into the calculation you are making, and just keep going without having to either fetch numbers from multiple documents, or places within one, or write down results on paper or in a text editor… It’s a great time saver!
It’s also great because here in the US we still aren’t fully metric, and fractions for measurements can be a bitch, especially because calculators that can do fractions may give you unusable results, like in the case of rulers having 1/2, 1/8, 1/16. 1/32, 1/64, but your calculator spits out 3/14 which the ruler or table saw fence doesn’t have, so just do 1 divided by 8 for 8ths, 1/16 for 16ths… and you will have those fractions in decimals you can more easily get to the nearest fraction after all calculations to determine where to cut.
As an Android user, this is one important app for me
This application mirrors Android devices (video and audio) connected via USB or over TCP/IP, and allows to control the device with the keyboard and the mouse of the computer. It does not require any root access. It works on Linux, Windows and macOS.
Check out SpeedCrunch
KDE comes with the Dolphin file manager, and although you can easily rename files and folders, if you want to change many file names to lets say number them, strip out segments, like in the case of folders full of music files… that can be more difficult. Well for that KDE makes "krename’, which is not installed out of the box. It can be used as is, or used as a plugin right in Dolphin.
With it I can load the folder “Music” and since I have a folder hierarchy of music/BAND or ARTIST NAME/ALBUM NAME/SONG NAME, I don’t need, nor want long file names like Frank Zappa - Overnight Sensation - 03 Dirty Love.mp3, so I can just load the entire Frank Zappa folder (with over 100 albums) and strip out the "Frank Zappa - " from any file that has it in the name all at once using a find and replace operation:
Find: Frank Zappa -
Replace with: (leave blank)
and they are all gone in over 100 folders! I can then do the same per album to strip out the Album title from all files within. Huge time saver!
It does all kinds of mass renaming operations like changing case of both name and extensions, and even add things from meta data into the name of graphics files, and has a plugin architecture for that, but it can use some work, like it doesn’t do folder names, only files. Many of the operations are boolean code, and it would help if more of those who make the plugins name them in human language, rather than using their boolean codes in the name, since many of us have no clue what all the codes mean… but of course one can make suggestions to KDE or the individual developers, which I do a lot of whenever I can to help out, even though I can’t help with code itself, it’s the least I can do to make programs more usable.
For converting all kinds of units of measure, there’s “convertall” in the AUR, so you can convert all kinds of measurements for cooking recipes, distances and what not. It even has no longer used ones historians can use to convert from lets say “Arms” to meters… Man is it great for engineers and anyone needing to convert between units.
Other favorites:
Musicbrainz Picard:
For automated audio file tagging operations. It can even recognize songs by audio content pretty good if you don’t know the song name, artist, or album. There’s also:
Kid3:
For more manual audio file tagging but still in multiple files at once.
ResistorDecoder (AUR):
For converting 4 and 5 color band resistor codes into Ohm values.
pyStopwatch (AUR):
Just a simple stopwatch/countdown timer with alert (end) popup and/or sound, and not for any specific tasks, like exercising, keeping track of work hours… since there are so many more task specific timing utilities just not well suited for whatever you may need on the fly (freind coming over in 45 minutes, or how long does this take me to do X starting now), nor need to accumulate or use for scheduling or time tracking over long periods…
Handbreak Media Transcoder:
For changing video to different formats: I don’t like having many formats with differing icons… if I can just easily convert a just downloaded wmp (Windows 
format), avi, mov, mpeg… tutorial or movie to mp4 a platform independent format, or resize them, both for on screen use and file size, as well as to webm for websites because they are html 5 compatible without needing a built in player or having Google (YouTube) tracking and logging and all up in my business… dragging people from my site to YouTube and ending up staying there instead of on my site. 
cpupower-gui:
For changing processor priority modes on the fly when needed.
There are more than I can easily list. Also: I have noticed that many Gnome users hail (now broken) “Extensions” and put it over KDE for that matter, possibly other DE’s that have similar functionality. I can’t speak for any other DE but KDE, and it too has a huge amount of extensions one can add to the DE Plasma, kate the text editor, in Dolphin file managers context menu… to do all kinds of operations on single and multiple files without having to open a media player/converter, GIMP… It’s just a matter of how to get and install them.
For KDE in general, many can be had through whatever package manager you use and add many utilities that integrate to KDE and the apps it comes with or to make KDE and it’s apps integrate features into other non KDE apps like Firefox… and also app specific ones you can add via the apps (kate, kwrite, dolphin…) settings, brows through what’s available and install them.
It does have some problems, like not having a more comprehensive version control, to prevent installing ones that won’t work right on your version of KDE or the app, way outdated stuff, and a more universal and controlled install method, but that’s too much to get into here, and better brought up on KDE’s forums and bug tracker.
I use “KDE connect” for Android control. It’s great too, and integrates into my KDE DE and apps seamlessly.
It does way more than just stream audio/video, but lets you use your keyboard to text with your phone, operate the PC from the phone and use it as an input device, do file management from the PC on the Android device, backup/transfer files, manage address books… and a whole lot more.
It supposedly works independently of KDE too, but I can’t say what the differences are or how well it works in other DE’s.
Wow! It sounds like it has way more than I will ever use, but I will try it and see if I can find use for it.
Thanks!
I concur. This for me is one of the crucial utilities. no matter what DE I use Gnome calculator must also be there, even if it drags the whole DE with it. Not galculator, not some other calculator app. Gnome Calculator. The best there is.
Well to be honest, every calculator could benefit from a good history!
Even better: One where you can label what things are, and maybe even save them to task related files one can load up.
I do make spread sheets that are task oriented, like after I purchase parts, to break them down to piece prices, add individual tax, split the shipping cost and add markup… to individual items, but LibreOffice (I hate proprietary and online apps like anything Microsoft/Google…) to this day is not necessarily user friendly at all, and often needs a bunch of info reading and answer finding for lack of good in app documentation, and as I mentioned with programs like krename: so many apps have functions that are code, and the freaking code used as the description! That’s just wrong! So unless you know what all of the little code snippets mean and those can be the same thing just different variations like with time when one thing uses caps YYYY,MM,DD and the other lower case, you need hours to figure out where and when what applies, find out the hard way that this app uses a different code for the very same thing… when they could just be fields in a pop up form specific to the operation.
For years I have wanted to make a well working functional data base with a kiosk to get shit done for my business, learned the ins and outs of data how to make a functional data base, only to find out that no program adheres to the proper ways of doing things to avoid problems, make it versatile and easy to use… even worse, once you get something working some app changes data base formats and it breaks everything, anything in LibreOffice base can result in a crash, and for every fix they break other stuff, so what’s the freaking point if only a programmer can make and use a database, but not the end user?
Back in the mid 90’s The BeOS had an underlying database that made itself, and if you typed in a phone number, address, in any app, it used pattern recognition, and you could also invoke a popup and call any text a product name, part number, whatever, even make new ones. Then if you typed something it recognized based on those things it asked if you wanted to add it to the data base, or you could pull up stuff from drop-downs right in any app, and fill out the rest, like names, addresses, labels (Personal, business, client, family…), and any app that worked with a type of data would access the one underlying data base, and none needed their own and in different formats! Why no other OS picked up on that and every app just has to do everything in their own way floors me! Now we can do everything, but nothing works well with anything else unless you are bound to some huge do all bloatware and stuck to their way of using it all, and with their hand in our wallet, or can hack shit together somehow, so we really can’t do anything easily as we choose.
Strangely HaikuOS is a BeOS clone but clones its multi threading and other features to be fast as lightning and able to multitask like nobodies business, which isn’t even nearly much of a problem anymore given current hardware capabilities, but left out it’s greatest feature: Everything works together and gets along!
Interesting how my perspective is very different.
password managers - I want my passwords to be available on any device. I don’t want a local pwd manager and manage the syncing. And I know Lastpass has had too many leaks, but Google has had none, neither has Bitwarden (which can also be selfhosted just like Keepass).
Gnome Terminal - like most Gnome apps, they are reinventing the wheel and removing features. the only real feature it has is changed color in sudo mode. I use KDE and would like this in Konsole
