• 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)

Am I really the first.

Nano!!!!!!

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

Edit:

• wget
• httpie
• tar & (un)zip

• 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

• 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

As boring as it is, gcc.

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

• 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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

In order of use:

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

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.