There are a lot of these lists out there. Rather than reinventing the wheel, I'll just link to some of my favorites and add the pieces that might be missing: Before I do anything: *Update the system! I use a mirror close to me, such as UC Davis' math dept. *Install the proprietary drivers for my system (for my Dell D630, it's the Wireless STA driver and the latest Nvidia driver). *Run this script and install the pieces I want (adds repos automatically - nice!). Some others suggestions: Install ubuntu-restricted-extras. Should give you the default Sun Java stuff as well as Flash (though, if you're using the 64bit distro, you'll end up reinstalling it using the proper build. See my earlier post on this). http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/04/10-things-to-do-after-installing-ubuntu.html Need games? Try PlayDeb . To play encrypted DVDs, the libdvdcss2 package is essential. libdvdcss is a simple library designed for accessing DVDs like a block device without having to b...