Not sure if this post has been done before, but here goes...

In your opinion, what are some programs that you have found or use that are absolutely must haves or must gets?

Lets go from there...

I'm pretty sure that it depends on what you want/need to do on the computer!

Chris

lftp - the best ftp client bar none
wget - who needs a fancy GUI app as a download manager?
cdparanoia - the best CD ripper available on Linux
lame - the best mp3 encoder
grip - Very configurable (although not very intiutive) frontend for cdparanoia and Lame
Eterm - for those fine looking terminals
ProFontWindows - the best console/editor font IMHO (http://www.tobias-jung.de/seekingprofont/index.html)
wmdrawer - excellent small program launcher dockapp that fits nicely in the slit in Fluxbox
wmcpuload, wmmemload, wmnetload, wmclockmon - matching dockapps to fill out the slit and look pretty
Mozilla Firebird - the browser of my choice
vim and gvim - editors or even functional IDE's (emacs suxxs :P)
mplayer - to play all those movies
eclipse - excellent IDE, especially for Java
xrootconsole - it not only looks pretty, it's useful too!
pan - very nice newsreader
xmms - for playing the mp3's you create with grip

Håkan

For me , they are:

nedit - very fast X editor, but it doesn't support CJK
mplayer - play xvid/mp3....etc
gimp - image convert/edit
xzgv - to view images in a directory
mozilla/firebird - the best browser because it is fast, work well with CJK html and it doesn't use ugly anti-alias fonts
gaim - good im without unneeded features
xvct - with some parameters it can display/input CJK correctly in X
xchat - there aren't many good irc client and xchat do the job quite well
xfce - I only have 256MB memory, so xfce beat kde in performance and style
ooffice - No explication needed, a must for students

(I don't count system utilities)

emacs -> very nice editor for programming
pine -> for mail and cause it has pico
pico -> fast editor, I just like it

sex - for unbeatable email signatures
dailystrips - if you don't get decend newspapers where you live

Add Ximian for email, and Xine for DVD playback, and let's not forget Xmms.

Rox-Filer

nethack - because we ALL need to goof off now and again

There are classes of apps that are essential and, among browsers, I use w3m and dillo for certain purposes (console browsing when I'm in the mood and quick-viewing local documentation) but the only app I couldn't do without is mozilla. I'll use whatever file manager or text editor or whatever - take one away and I'll use another. But take away mozilla and I don't surf.

The coolest apps are the kernel, bash, and all the other tools that come with any distro. Same might be true of bash and some others - I haven't tried csh and the rest to see if I could accept a substitute or not.

Oh yeah - and fluxbox. Although I could live with blackbox, as I used to.

But wget, cdparanoia, eterm, mplayer, xmms, nedit - all good. I like the ogg-utils and ncftp. And the eternal "what's this app?", gkrellm.

I find cd, ls, su and bash quite useful.

lets add nc --> really its a swiss knife...