What Are Your MUST-HAVE Applications/Utilities?

General system Applications
1

When installing a fresh EndeavourOS (or any Linux distro), what are your must-have apps and/or utilities.

Going as far back as the mid-2000s, I’ve always kept a list. It usually varied by DE. But these past few years, I’m straight KDE Plasma. And my list has, and continues to grow. These are the first things I either install, or make sure are already installed…

Apps For Linux: Q1 - 2025

Kitty
Fish Shell
Fastfetch
Pacseek
yay
flathub
KDE Partition Manager
KDE ISO Image Writer
CPU-X
HTop
Timeshift
Filelight
Mullvad
Bitwarden
Klassy
Xed
LibreOffice Fresh
Gwenview
Okular
Gimp
Krita
Upscayl
Sound Converter
EasyTAG
Sound Juicer
K3b
Audacity (Tenacity)
Reaper DAW
DeaDBeeF
Audacious
Kdenlive (Shotcut)
VLC
MPV
yt-dlp
Qbittorrent
MEGA
Wepapp Manager
Gear Lever
Steam
Discord
Firefox (LibreWolf)
Vivaldi
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  • qdirstat
  • tuc (a better cut)
  • kitty & ghostty
  • emacs
  • ps_mem
  • vorta
  • joplin
  • keyd
  • ssh / sshfs
  • vivaldi

In no particular order :smiley:

3 Likes
3

Hmm…

vi
firefox
freetube
yt-dlp
qtcreator
steam
kate
konsole
kdiff3
darktable
gimp
qwenview
okular
betterbird
kde-connect
lftp
neochat
haruna
calibre
joplin
softmaker office
vmware-workstation
bitwarden
vscodium
firewalld
opensnitch
zsh
git

There are a lot more that I have installed but those are the must haves. For example, I have 11 browsers installed right now. I could probably prune that back though. :sweat_smile:

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4

friday ice GIF

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  • firefox
  • calibre
  • flatpack
  • nvtop
  • htop
  • zsh
  • iftop
  • libreoffice
  • keepassxc
  • kitty
  • gufw
  • thunderbird
  • rclone
  • timeshift
  • yt-dlp
  • opensnitch
  • gimp
  • krita
  • delugue-gtk
  • skanlite
  • steam
  • lutris
  • obs-studio
  • fastfetch
  • kdenlive
  • audacity
  • remmina
  • foliate
  • filezilla
  • wireshark-qt
  • torbrowser
  • inkscape
  • handbrake
  • blender
  • atool
  • obsidian
  • veracrypt
  • openrazer-daemon
  • clamav
  • rkhunter
  • lynis

And that’s about it :sweat_smile:

4 Likes
6

Not much.
For my last scripted installation of Endeavour, I created such a list:

zsh
zsh-completions
zsh-autosuggesting
zsh-syntax-highlighting
kitty
lsd
bat
pulsemixer
ufw
feh
ncmpcpp
mpd
mpc
zathura
zathura-pdf-mupdf
ranger
fastfetch
mpv
vim
timeshift
scrot
htop
newsboat
redshift
w3m
rdrview-git
spotify-launcher
spicetify-cli
ffmpeg
gimp
android-tools
qalculate-gtk
calcurse

These are apps I still keep on my system.
For instance, I replaced Firefox with LibreWolf (on my Mint installation on another laptop I use Brave).
On Mint I also use Audacious instead of ncmpcpp and pavucontrol instead of pulsemixer (my Arch/Endeavour installation has a terminal app parity).

4 Likes
7

Through some of your lists, I found a few I missed including. Updated my OP.

Those I missed:

ffmpeg
Fastfetch
Gwenview
Okular
MPV
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8

You need to join Browser Hoppers Anonymous :rofl:

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9

Good list by everyone. . . . .I would add ‘mc’ to the list. . . .

Rich;)

3 Likes
10

I mainly use EOS+Cinnamon, set for German (just because I live here), dead tilde modified E2 kbd + Caps as Compose key.

Services enabled:

  • cronie (still a crontab fan)
  • bluetooth
  • sshd
  • anydesk (after installing it)

Pre-installed but must-have:

  • ncdu
  • htop
  • ssh
  • inxi

Must-have utils:

  • iio-sensor-proxy (mainly tablets/convertibles: get accelerometer and other sensors to dbus)
  • bluez, bluez-utils, blueman
  • pamac-aur (no flatpak or snap here)
  • ffmpeg, ffmpegthumbnailer
  • anydesk (yeah, I do support…)
  • keepassxc
  • syncthing (to sync my KeepPassXC db & Obsidian/Markdown files)
  • shutter (for annotated screenshots)
  • libreoffice (+ lang packs)
  • a crazy large .XCompose (I write a lot; Compose to the rescue)
  • geany
  • my ~/bin folder, containing tools/utils I wrote these past decades
  • pulsar-bin (I learned to love Atom, back in the days)
  • meld
  • pandoc-cli, pandoc-crossref

I probably forgot a lot, but the above are the bare essentials I can’t live without.

Depending on what a machine will be used for (programming, Internet radio, or writing), the additional software installed varies.

Notable mentions:

  • Writing:

    • texlive-meta (LaTeX)
    • foliate (ebook reader)
    • novelwriter (for writing fiction)
    • ghostwriter (distraction-free Markdown writing)

  • Webcasting, Internet Radio, Music:

    • idjc, libshout-idjc (webcasting)
    • whipper (accurate CD ripping)
    • quodlibet (music catalog, crazy search features but slooooow)
    • strawberry (music catalog & playing)
    • audacious (just my default audio player)
    • jellyfin-media-player (watch movies, live TV, listen to music from my media library at home)

Hope you find one or more software pearls in this list you didn’t know and find useful!

7 Likes
11

Some things that are probably part of most systems anyways;

  • coreutils
  • openssh
  • curl
  • iptables
  • $BROWSER yeah, I will refrain from choosing one but, we would certainly put ~a browser~ in the MUST-HAVE category, right?

Some things that are common but I find pretty indispensable;

  • gimp
  • inkscape
  • ffmpeg
  • imagemagick
  • git

Some things with alternatives that could be lived without but are preferred;

  • nnn
  • micro
  • meld
  • mpv
  • gparted
  • jitsi-meet
  • hblock
  • inxi
  • bash
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7zip
alacritty
android-tools
brave
cmatrix 
conky
fastfetch
freetube
gnome-disk-utility
hardinfo2
hblock
mpv
plank
rsync
ventoy
viewnior
yt-dlp
zen-browswer

A few mentions

gparted
testdisk
ddrescue
dd
5 Likes
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must have

ungoogled chromium
libre wolf
libre office
gedit
alcaritty
dialect (the only foss translator I know of)
keepassxc
plank
yt-dlp
pwgen
nemo

[Mostly not fussy about a distro’s:
pdf reader
music player
video player
file extractor
picture opener
firewall (but in case of no firewall, ufw for sure) ]

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glances 
wavemon
zsh
kitty
rsync
flameshot
xed
firefox
thunderbird
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  • fastfetch
  • kitty
  • btop
  • dust
  • logseq
  • krita
  • gimp
  • aseprite
  • digikam
  • inkscape
  • visual studio code
  • speed crunch
  • steam
  • discord
  • elisa
  • whipper
  • firefox + ublock origin
  • chromium
  • thunderbird
  • mpv
  • libreoffice
  • kalibre
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16

this is a surprise ,) Have been using this for ages

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17

how did I forget yt-dlp!

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18

Yeah, I know I am breaking the rules by using proprietary software but I prefer it to the open source alternatives.

1 Like
19

Look again I didn’t :wink:

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20

Reading your list made me realize I hadn’t included it, despite how useful it is =)

3 Likes