I keep a list on my backup partition:

$ cat packages.list

appimagelauncher
base-devel
aws-cli
aws-session-manager-plugin
bat
bob
direnv

discord
docker-compose
dog
dotnet-sdk
erdtree
eza
fastfetch
github-cli
httpie
k9s
krita
kubectx
lazygit

mariadb-clients
megacmd
minikube
mpd
mtr
mumble
nvtop
obs-studio
ollama-rocm
qalculate-gtk
restic
siege
speedtest-cli

steam
terraform
tig
timeshift-autosnap
tree-sitter
virt-manager
virt-viewer
yazi
yq
ttf-jetbrains-mono-nerd
ttf-liberation
ttf-meslo-nerd-font-powerlevel10k
ttf-nerd-fonts-symbols
ttf-nerd-fonts-symbols-common
ttf-roboto
wine
wine-gecko
wine-mono
winetricks
playerctl
php
php-gd
php-sodium
streamdeck-ui
speedtest-cli
zoxide
zsh
ripgrep
fd
dry-bin
kitty
xdotool
tmux
tmux-plugin-manager
sublime-text-4
trash-cli

Flat seal if you are a flatpak gamer. Also gamemode

Portmaster if you want to manually control each network connection. It has nice lists that blocks a lot of trash by default but it can break websites and games.

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deleted by creator

I believe Firefox is installed by default on Mint, so install uBO.

Transmission.

Veracrypt.

Audacious.

Xournalpp - a fantastic tool for journalling (on X/twitter) your peeing habits.

vim, htop , iotop, screen, nslookup.

• Anki
• Beyond Compare
• Discord
• GIMP (Not sure if it’s installed by default on Linux Mint) with PhotoGIMP patch.
• GnuCash
• GParted
• KeePassXC
• KWrite + Kate
• Pinta
• qbittorrent
• Steam
• Telegram
• Thunderbird
• virt-manager
• VLC
• Wine

I’m going to try to mention things I haven’t seen already written, though I may repeat some of the more important ones to me.

(In no particular order)

Terminal:

• Kitty (Main Terminal)
• Fish (Terminal Prompt)
• Neovim (Code/Text editing)
• Zoxide (a directory changer; once you go to a directory, you can type z and a partial name to go back to it)
• Atuin (a command history lister, can get a key and bring over commands from other systems)
• Midnight Commander (CLI file manager)
• Btop (CLI system monitor)
• Palette (I do a lot of theming in different configs as well as HTML/CSS, so its nice to have something to quick convert hex to RGB).

GUI:

• Timeshift (backup/restore)
• Eddie (for AirVPN)
• novelWriter (my FAVORITE writing tool for my books)
• Floorp (Firefox fork browser)
• Conky Manager 2 (desktop monitoring widgets)
• Rofi (keyboard launcher)
• firewalld (tried this out recently, good firewall)
• Flameshot (ALWAYS; its my favorite screenshot tool)
• MPV (I still get VLC, but opt for MPV most of the time for videos/streaming)
• Speedcrunch (A+ calculator)
• Steam
• Lutris
• Protonup-QT (to inject GE Proton into Steam/Lutris)
• Stremio (a great little streaming tool)

I would like to add that I do use Arch, but I’m fairly sure 99% of these packages, if not all of them, are available for most other distros.

For CLI lovers: Check out Terminal Trove

Edit: I did see that someone mentioned no explanations on the apps, so I tried to put a little blurb on each.

CopyQ is an advanced clipboard manager. Gimp is great but Pinta is easy for quick, minor image adjustments. System Monitor is an applet that displays system information by double clicking on a taskbar icon. If you use VPNs, the IP Indicator applet shows the country of your public IP or customized icon when matching ISP is found.

Fortune. Cowsay.

• Shell: Fish
• Resource monitoring: Btop
• Browser: Librewolf
• Text editor: Vim (unless you do heavy programming then neovim)
• Basic tools: git and wget
• Themeing: GTK customizer
• Terminal: Foot

People replying - how about telling us why you consider your answer a must-install tool?

kitty, nvim, fish, zed, mpv, btop, borg. Weird how all the gone ones have short names. Depending on the system, I would add tlp as well.

System :

• zram (who says you can’t just install more RAM 😄 )

Terminal :

• kitty (terminal emulator)
• fastfetch (must take screenshots to show off every new Linux install, it’s in the EULA)
• zsh (thought I’d like to try nushell one of these days) with zsh-syntax-highlighting, zsh-completiions and zsh-suggestions
• GNU Stow (to manage symlinks, I store my dotfiles in a repo witch contains home, etc and usr folders, and I use GNU Stow to symlink them respectively to /home/username, /etc and /usr, that way all my config is in the same place so I can back it up easily and have version control)
• rsync (to sync backup folders)
• btop (system monitoring)
• clamav (antivirus)
• brightnessctl (for screen brightness control, but I should probably use brillo instead https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGOaSS8nEQA)
• yt-dpl (for downloading videos from YouTube/TikTok/wherever else)
• ani-cli (for watching anime from the terminal, obviously a must-have for any Arch Mint user)
• figlet (to write text from fonts made of ASCII art)
• cpipes, asciiquarium, cbonsai, matrix for when I get bored in meetings
• hollywood and rust-stakeholer if I ever need to pretend I’m doing something productive
• lots of TUI apps from https://github.com/rothgar/awesome-tuis

General GUI apps :

• Sway (tiling WM) though I’d really like to try niri (instead of several workspace it has a single one of infinite length that you can scroll through)
• rofi and rofi-calc (app launcher that can also do a lot other stuff if you want like file browser, ssh menu, calculator, emoji selector, it’s very light and superfast), also rofi-emoji (emoji selector)
• VSCode (code editor)
• KeepassXC (password manager)
• lutris, steam, protontricks, ProtonGE (gaming)
• FontManager
• Ventoy (for making USBs with multiple ISO on them)
• LibreOffice

Internet :

• Waterfox + LibreWolf (web browsers) with the following extensions : uBlock, Consent-O-matic, DownThemAll, KeepasXC-Browser, Copy PlainText, Copy Link Text, EPUB Reader, Markdown Viewer Web Ext, Sponsor Block, Return YouTube Dislike, YouTube Anti Translate, CanvasBlocker, Font Fingerprint Defender, WebGL Fingerprint Defender (I had to give up on User-Agent Switcher because it causes me to be blocked on too many websites)
• qBittorrent (BitTorrent client)
• FileZilla (FTP client)

Media :

• XVview (image viewer)
• ksnip (GUI screen capture)
• Gimp (image editor)
• Inkscape (vector image editor)
• MPC and VLC (audio/video players)
• Libation (to liberate Audible audiobooks from your account)
• cheese (camera)

I’m on Arch so the package names might be a bit different