When installing a fresh copy of your favorite 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
During my short Linux desktop journey so far, these are the softwares I usually install, in alpha order:
Chrome (for few web apps as the WebApp app never worked for me)
Clock (KDE)
EasyEffects
Enpass Password Manager
FileZilla
Flatseal (KDE built-in flatpak permissions app is enough though)
Fooyin
FreeFileSync
FreeTube
GearLever
Goverlay (Configuration GUI for MangoHud)
HandBrake
Kcron (KDE only as it’s a KDE settings app “extension”)
KDiskMark
KRename
Krita
Kwrite/Kate (on other DEs, preinstalled on KDE)
Libre Office (usually preinstalled on all distros)
MangoHud
Nextcloud Client
Puddletag
Showfoto
Steam
Thunderbird
VLC
Video Downloader
Warehouse
xnConvert
xnView MP
There is no backup software on the lists as I haven’t found one I like so I’m using a custom rsync script that mimics the Apple Time Machine, seems to work well, locally and over sftp.
I am simble my first ones goes all flatpaks and
Development is done from containers Distrobox usually. This is and have been my to go setup for years Fedora, opensuse and now KDE immutables. KDE Linux ( project banana ) my main now.
Glad you mentioned that, I was trying to think of what I use that isn’t already covered here and that’s it - I really like BorgBackup, either as the raw command-line tool or the Pika Backup and Vorta graphical front-ends.
“audacious” for music
→ UADE for amiga chip music conversion
“smplayer” for video
“librewolf” +" privacy badger" + “ublock” for normal browsing
“thunderbird” for email, cal- and carddav
“octopkg” for a pkg gui
“networkmgr” for wpasupplicant gui
“kmix” for handling OSS audio volume
Plasma’s very own “Media Frame” Plasmoid" to put the freebsd/#RunBSD logo on the background
honorary mention: “fish”, “mc”, “btop” and “bsdebfetch”
hmm, sums it up I guess. Other things include the basic stuff enabling dbus, getting accelerate gpu and wifi to work or bookmarking of the FreeBSD Handbook and the excessive use of “man”. Ymmv
Borgbase is too expensive though. Hetzner’s Storage Box offers Borg compatibility but I couldn’t figure out how to enable it Maybe some other time.
The main limitation of Borg for me is that backups are not searchable. But as an offsite backup for a disaster recovery scenario I would use it but I’d need to figure out how to enable it on Storage Box.
When I open Dolphin, I usually hit F4 and use konsole and z to jump around (to the point that I rarely click on ‘Places’ and use Bookmarks only to recall directories I’ve forgotten - like my icon folder on a storage drive (I never remember the location and don’t go there often)… but even those I can find with ‘zi’ instead.
zi reminds me about the rarely used ~/.icons folder as well as my /T4/Resource/icons folder.
Yeah, I don’t make lists, so I forgot to include software for my backup regimen. I set-and-forgot it lol.
I do use Kup for various schedules, both for synchronized and incremental backups to an external drive as well as a thumb drive, or my currently mothballed NAS.
I send the external drive backups to The Cloud using rclone.
I am lazy, so I use Timeshift to schedule regular btrfs snapshots for the very rare disaster recovery.
I don’t use the borg (i.e. borg, vorta, etc.) backup package, I use fsarchiver and it too has the same or similar issue that you’ve described. What I do to explore fsarchiver backups is to make a temporary file based filesystem (tfbf), restore to it, mount it and then I can explore the tfbf, pull files off of it, etc. I have integrated this with mc to make it reasonably trivial to use. You could probably do the same thing with borg backups. Systems are really powerful these days, so this is now a practical way to deal with large archives.
p.s. For tfbf use fallocate instead of dd if your system and devices support it.
For everyday, local, at-home backups, I would just use the “Time Machine” script. Since it just creates directories and files I can simply search them with my file manager. So I can search and quickly restore files on occasion. There is no compression and no deduplication, but most of my files are incompressible media and I have lots of local space for backups.
Online, offsite backups are a different story. Clearly, this script isn’t adequate for online backup since there is no encryption and no compression. So, online backup is still an unsolved problem for me as I can’t wrap my head around Restic and solution like yours also seems beyond my skills and knowledge. I tried to play around with encrypted file systems, disk images on sftp shares, etc., but got nowhere.
I really wish Backblaze would already release a Linux client for their Desktop Backup. I don’t mean B2, but their commercial desktop backup solution.
I use a lot of the apps folks have already listed. And I learned a few new ones to try! Yakuake is near the top of my install list. I would also add atop and dust.
htop is my daily-driver for top tools. But if you really need to see where your hardware is bottlenecking, try atop. I also like it because almost every distro has it even RPi.
dust is an alternative to du. faster and prettier.
I have it scheduled pacman -Qqet | grep -v "$(pacman -Qqg)" | grep -v "$(pacman -Qqm)" > ~/Dropbox/pkglist.txt so that if there’s a hardware failure I can always use it to remind me of what I forgot.
Kitty: This is a fast, feature-rich, GPU-accelerated terminal emulator. Think of it as a more powerful and customizable replacement for your default terminal.
Fish Shell: Fish is a user-friendly command-line shell that focuses on discoverability and ease of use. It has features like autosuggestions, tab completion, and a more intuitive syntax compared to Bash.
Fastfetch: A command-line system information tool. It quickly displays details about your operating system, hardware, and desktop environment in a visually appealing way. It’s similar to Neofetch but often faster.
Pacseek: This is a terminal-based front-end for pacman, the package manager used in Arch Linux and its derivatives. It provides a searchable and interactive way to browse and manage packages.
yay: Yet another Yogurt. It’s a popular command-line AUR (Arch User Repository) helper for Arch Linux. It simplifies the process of downloading, building, and installing packages from the AUR.
Flathub: This isn’t an application itself, but rather a centralized platform for distributing and installing Linux applications in the Flatpak format. It makes it easy to get the latest versions of apps that run sandboxed on your system.
KDE Partition Manager: A powerful graphical utility for managing disk partitions. You can use it to create, delete, resize, format, and move partitions on your hard drives or other storage devices.
KDE ISO Image Writer: A simple and straightforward tool from KDE for writing ISO images (like those for installing operating systems) to USB drives or DVDs.
CPU-X: A system monitoring tool that provides detailed information about your CPU, motherboard, memory, and other hardware components. It’s a graphical alternative to tools like lscpu and dmidecode.
HTop: An interactive and improved version of the classic top command-line utility. It displays real-time information about system processes, CPU usage, memory usage, and more, with a more user-friendly interface.
Timeshift: A system snapshot and restore tool. It allows you to take incremental backups of your system files and easily revert to a previous state if something goes wrong.
Filelight: A graphical disk usage analyzer. It displays your disk space usage in a colorful, interactive pie chart, making it easy to identify large files and directories.
Mullvad: A Virtual Private Network (VPN) service and their official Linux application allows you to connect to their VPN servers, manage your account, and configure settings.
Bitwarden: A free and open-source password manager. Their Linux application allows you to securely store and manage your passwords, generate strong passwords, and automatically fill them in websites and applications.
Klassy: A global theme configuration tool specifically for KDE Plasma desktops. It allows you to customize the look and feel of your desktop environment, including window decorations, widgets, and application styles.
Xed: A lightweight and simple text editor that is the default text editor in the MATE desktop environment. It’s designed to be easy to use for basic text editing tasks.
LibreOffice Fresh: A powerful and free office suite, the “Fresh” version typically refers to the latest stable release with the newest features. It includes applications for word processing (Writer), spreadsheets (Calc), presentations (Impress), and more.
Gwenview: An image viewer for KDE Plasma. It provides a clean and efficient interface for browsing, viewing, and basic manipulation of image files.
Okular: A universal document viewer developed by KDE. It supports a wide range of document formats, including PDF, EPUB, DjVu, and more, and offers features like annotations and text extraction.
Gimp (GNU Image Manipulation Program): A powerful and free open-source raster graphics editor. It’s a feature-rich alternative to Adobe Photoshop, used for image editing, retouching, and creation.
Krita: A free and open-source digital painting application designed for artists, illustrators, and concept artists. It offers a wide range of brushes, tools, and features specifically tailored for digital painting.
Upscayl: An AI-powered image upscaling tool. It uses artificial intelligence models to increase the resolution of images while attempting to maintain or even enhance detail.
Sound Converter: A simple graphical application for converting audio files between various formats. It supports a range of popular audio codecs.
EasyTAG: A utility for viewing and editing the metadata (tags) of audio files, such as artist, album, title, and track number. It supports various audio formats.
Sound Juicer: A CD ripping application for GNOME. It allows you to extract audio tracks from CDs and encode them into various digital audio formats.
K3b (KDE Burn Baby Burn): A comprehensive CD and DVD burning application for KDE. It supports various types of media and burning options.
Audacity (Tenacity): A free and open-source digital audio editor and recording application. Tenacity is a fork of Audacity that aims to be free of telemetry and other controversial features. It’s used for recording, editing, and mixing audio.
Reaper DAW (Digital Audio Workstation): A powerful and highly customizable digital audio workstation. While proprietary, it’s known for its affordability and flexibility, used for recording, editing, mixing, and mastering audio.
DeaDBeeF: A lightweight and highly customizable modular audio player. It supports a wide range of audio formats and allows for extensive plugin customization.
Audacious: Another lightweight audio player known for its low resource usage and support for various audio formats. It’s a good alternative for those who prefer a simpler interface.
Kdenlive (KDE Non-Linear Video Editor) (Shotcut): Both are free and open-source non-linear video editing software. Kdenlive is part of the KDE ecosystem, while Shotcut is a cross-platform editor. They allow you to edit and manipulate video footage, add effects, and create video projects.
VLC (VideoLAN Client): A highly versatile and popular multimedia player. It supports a vast array of audio and video formats, as well as streaming protocols.
MPV: A minimalist and powerful command-line video player. While it has a basic GUI, it’s known for its flexibility and support for advanced playback options.
yt-dlp: A command-line program to download videos and audio from YouTube and many other websites. It’s a fork of the now-discontinued youtube-dl with added features and fixes.
Qbittorrent: A free and open-source BitTorrent client. It provides a user-friendly interface for downloading and sharing files via the BitTorrent protocol.
MEGA: A cloud storage and file hosting service. Their Linux application allows you to sync files between your computer and your MEGA account, manage your files, and share them with others.
WebApp Manager (Gear Lever): These are tools (WebApp Manager is more common on Linux Mint, Gear Lever on elementary OS) that allow you to easily create desktop applications from websites. They essentially wrap a website in a simple browser window, making it feel more like a native application.
Steam: A popular digital distribution platform for video games. Their Linux client allows you to purchase, download, and play games from their extensive library.
Discord: A popular voice, video, and text communication platform, widely used by gamers and online communities. Their Linux application provides access to Discord servers and direct messages.
Firefox (LibreWolf): Firefox is a widely used open-source web browser. LibreWolf is a privacy-focused fork of Firefox, with telemetry and other privacy-compromising features removed.
Vivaldi: A highly customizable web browser built on the Chromium engine. It offers a wide range of features and settings for power users.
I choose plasma/qt when possible, custom toolbars & shortcuts rock
A few minor differences in my add ons
K-torrent
Qalculate, built in conversions
Always some secondary music player to supplement Clementine, Audacious to check files before adding to library
EasyTag, which eats the Group column, but all the other metadata editors confuse me
Haruna video player, easier than VLC
Digikam, I hate the gimp workflow, gwenview does the easy stuff
Grsync backs up my cherished content every 6 months, in case my sdd goes bad
Snapper brtfs came with Debian stable via Spiral Linux to restore/rollback
Maybe some other time.
