stuff i must have installed to feel good. first of all i must recommend debian to everyone. the package system and the debian community is fucking neat.

blackbox
kick ass no bullshit windowmanager. check out latest stable version 0.62.1. you will also find alpha/beta releases there. viva blackbox!

aterm
starting with the application i use the most. the terminal. it supports transparency, tint, shading and all the other stuff. lacks the borderless option. consumes small amounts of resources compared to i.e eterm. who needs shit like a filemanger?

zsh
zsh is a powerfull shell. using scripts you can make it do almost everything. it makes a darn good pizza too. i recommend you check my howto page for some usefull config files to use with it.

vim
vim. nuff said.

ssh
secure shell. get rid of telnet and install ssh instead. ssh encrypts logon info, terminating the effect of sniffing.

xfstt
x11 font server for true type fonts. a must. working in gimp and browsing the web is something else with true type fonts. and please check ut this howto it's for debian, but i'm sure this will help you no matter what distro you are running.

the gimp
gnu image manipulation program. compact, fast and full of features. essential if you like to play with images like i do.

gqview
really nice imageviewer for x. try it out.

sylpheed
well, i really liked pronto!, but it had it's flaws with attachments and such. sylpheed has it all. mail, news, gpg, threading, filters, address book and of course support for multiple accounts. it's light and sweet. for those of you that prefer console; mutt.

galeon
god damn! finally a browser for linux which delivers. requires moxilla 0.9.x

proftpd
secure and configurable ftp-server.

yafc
GPL kick you in the nutsack ftp client. supports ssh2 and kerberos authentication. colored ls, remote filename completion, directory cache, background downloading and more. sweet jesus.

epic
epic is an no bullshit console irc-client. i recommend the hienoa script to go with it.

rexima
rexima (amixer backwards - cool eh?) is a console soundmixer. combined with amp you get a good warm sound.

amp
console mp3-player. mpg123 is nothing compared to this in my book. the link leads to direct download. could not find a site.

vlc
out with xine and start loving vlc. this is a dvd player for every os. sweet stuff indeed.

mplayer
sweet god almighty! command-line multimedia player for your every need. fast and smooth. scanning forward and backwards works like a dream. many sweet features for your pleasure.

genmenu
neat little script used to detect and organize your application in a blackbox menu. let's you decide default font, terminal, browser size and much more. try it :)

screen
instead of having 15 terminals up at once, learn to use screen. it's sweet and practical.

feh
feh is a fast, lightweight image viewer which uses imlib2. it is commandline-driven and supports multiple images through slideshows, thumbnail browsing or multiple windows, and montages or index prints (using truetype fonts to display file info).
description ripped rights from freshmeat.net. i am the bastard. and while you are at the site check out scrot, nice tool for making screenshots. allright.

other stuff
i could go on and on here. but i won't. other really neat stuff is: perl, mysql, apache, php4, sendmail, fetchmail, gpg and on goes the list. you have to find out yourself what you want. this is just my favourites. choice is a keyword in the world of open source.