quite exactly what I install too

If libreoffice, firefox, and thunderbird are installed, the next most important programs to me are

doublecmd
kate
foxit

first thing is to add Chrome, thonny, Tilda, then remove Firefox/Thunderbird/pidgin

My fav work set
 

(Assuming KDE/Plasma5 is the default desktop. If not, make it so)
• development env (gcc, make, etc)
• xterm (from source)
• DejaVu Sans & DejaVu Sans Mono fonts
• git (from latest stable tgz)
• tcsh (from git checkout)
• elvis (from git geckout)
• claws-mail (from git checkout)
• hexchat (from git checkout)
• perl (from latest stable tgz) plus a bazillion number of CPAN modules amongst which several perl/Tk modules (I do not use system perl)
• opera-developer, chromium, & vivaldi
• pm-cb-g (from git with some personal changes)
• xosview (from source)
• LibreOffice
• PostgreSQL (from recent repo)
Then I remove emacs and all other bloat I will never use and then block it in the package manager so it won't be installed ever

Image Viewer & Gimp

Some other softwares I install for a short time then remove when not needed. Reinstall if re needed. Keeps system cleaner this way.

Firefox, Lyx (source code, best compiled in situ), Texlive, Smplayer, libreoffice, VLC, Acrobat Reader (despite its crippled state).

First past the post:
 

Running Antergos with Cinnamon:
NFS, Guake, urxvt, Ranger, Tor-browser, Sublime Text 3 Dev, Conky,
Plank, Mixxx, GMPC, Easytag, Audacity, Flameshot, Gimp, AftershotPro3, Photomatix Pro,
Kdenlive, GoPro VR Player, GThumb, and a ton of utilities.

So just a slick installation :-)

Good question:

running;
xfce 18.04 at the moment, as 18.10 had too many fail issues, only accessible via recovery mode.
---------------------

ufw

then if missing with the install (version):
firefox
libre office
gimp
gthumb
gnome-calculator
audacity

baobab a disk usage analyzer
gnome-disk-utility (to format usb's)
usb-creator-gtk (startup disk creator)

sometimes:
cheese and guvcview
a better terminal
synaptic
calibre
chrome
pulse audio

rarely:
aptitude

hopefully never needed again:
the scalp-carve programs as the file names returned are lengthy numbers.

---------
That's it and those basics are enough,
possibly later I might look for a rename files in a folder program.

plus, I'm not a programmer so I don't require compilers etc.


Woo Woo, Guess I should copy this list, but most are in my brain already.

I install Vim, Texmaker, Mathematica, and Anaconda.

I start from PCLinuxOS Trinity or KDE, one of the versions that comes with Lots Of Stuff, so usually already has LibreOffice (or the manager), GIMP, a couple browsers, etc. From there, if not already present:

SeaMonkey, Palemoon, maybe some subspecies of Chrome

XFE File Manager (I like how it handles root access)

every K-app I can find, plus Calligra or K-Office

some species of SameGame or KSame

graphics editors like Blender and Inkscape (mostly because I'm trying to convince myself to learn them, being utterly spoiled by Corel PhotoPaint)

And then I mutter and swear a lot as I try all sorts of MP3 players, and find that to this day, NONE of them works as seamlessly as WinAmp2.x. (I did find an RPM for WinAmp3, but couldn't get it to run due to missing dependencies.) One of these days I'm going to resort to a VM, TinyXP, and the real thing.

I've given up on WINE; I have yet to have any success with it. (Either that, or a lowly Core2Duo 3.2GHz with a mere 8GB RAM is way below spec, even tho the rest of the system runs slick. WINE takes about 5 minutes to finally come up and tell me that it's not going to run.)

Waterfox, Zim (for my notes), LibreOffice, Wine, Nvidia drivers.

New
 

VPN, Veracrypt, and then PokerTH. Usually in that order. :)

I install cjdns first thing. This is a global IPv6 mesh vpn that does not depend on a VPN server and where the IP6 addresses are crypto authenticated. I then edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config to restrict remote (ssh) logins to specific cjdns IPs - since the device is now reachable by any other cjdns user.

Next is linphone for peer to peer voice/video calls (and POTS calls using a centralized paid service) and opensmtpd for peer to peer email. Alpine for text mode email client that actually works. (Evolution, gears, thunderbird, claws-mail all have different problems with IPv6 and/or local mailboxes.)

Dnsmasq for local DNS caching using my own trusted DNS resolver over Cjdns IP (ISP resolvers are as trustworthy as TV/Cable news). Iftop to see what is using all my bandwidth.

Finally, for rotating disks, hdparm to turn off the constant head unloading/reloading that plagues modern "green" disks and drastically shortens their life (very ungreen).

Vim-enhanced is my programming editor - but that war is so last century.

Primary install is kubuntu 18.04
immediate after the updates are:
xosview, exfat, ntfs config, gpart, cheese

Peter
 

mc
chromium
kate
gedit
gnome-calendar
konsole
korganizer
krusdader
emacs
aisleriot
gnome-sudoku
gnucash
wine
stellarium
google-earth
picasa3 - from my historical collection of no longer availables
digikam
galculator
g++
libncurses
mucommander
dolphin
k3b
double commander
etcher

Obviously some of these come with various distros, but not all, so I add
the ones that did not come with whatever I am installing.
Pete.