Recommended software

Base system

Operating system

• Arch Linux
• OpenBSD
• Debian is good for servers
• Centos if you're looking for a free community Enterprise Linux server

Shell

• zsh

Window managers

• i3
• Herbstluftwm

Status monitoring (in X)

• i3bar-icons
• Conky
• An ugly mess of Dzen2 and bash scripts

Internet

Web browsing

• Firefox with Pentadactyl

Mail clients

• mutt
• Thunderbird

Contact management systems

• lbdb

File sharing

• Transmission
• Dtella

Chat

XMPP client

• xmpp-client
• Gibberbot on Android

IRC clients

• weechat

Productivity

Programming

• Eclipse
• Clang Complete

Text editors

• vim
• Emacs (evil mode)

Terminal stuff

• Screen
• zsh
• Tmux

Word processing

• LaTeX

Note-taking

• Keepnote
• BasKet
• vimwiki
• emacs org-mode

To-do list

• taskwarrior

Document viewing

• evince (older versions; newest has gnome-specific optimizations and design features)
• atril

Ebooks

• Calibre

File managers

• ranger

Audio

Music players

• mpd
• pianobar (pandora client)
• cmus

MPD clients

• ncmpcpp

Audio recording

• arecord

Audio Routing

• JACK

Virtualization

• qemu (with KVM)
• virt-manager
• SPICE

Hardware

• Arduino (microcontroller)
• BeagleBoard (single board computer)
• Raspberry Pi (system on chip)

See also

• Harmful