Arch Packages You Might Want to Install

After installing a fresh Arch, the system ist pretty bare and you might spend a long time thinking about which packages you might need. But even after installing all packages you came up with, the installation is likely followed by a long period where you regularly discover missing tools. To help to speed things up, here is a opinionated list of arch packages that most people might want to install. It's not meant as a list to blindly copy-paste, but rather as a checklist. For some packages, that won't be relevant for everyone, I added some comments.

# Hardware related and drivers
alsa-firmware
alsa-utils
bluez-utils
pulseaudio
pulseaudio-bluetooth
linux-firmware
v4l-utils
wireless_tools
wpa_supplicant
networkmanager
intel-ucode      # If you use an Intel processor
sof-firmware     # Firmware for many sound cards
linux-zen        # Alternative kernel


# Admin tools
awk
bash-completion
base-devel
curl
dnsutils
git
gnupg
inetutils
iproute2
iptables
iw
iwd
jq
less
lsof
man
net-tools
nmap
openssh
strace
sudo
unzip
usbutils
whois


# More Advanced Debugging Tools
bcc
bcc-tools
bpf
bpftrace
tcpdump
wireshark


# Basic terminal applications
bc
neomutt    # enhanced version of the mutt mail client
neovim     # enhanced successor of vim
python-neovim
screen
tmux
wget


# Convenience terminal tools
bat
dust
fd
lynx
ncdu
ripgrep
zoxide
wl-clipboard  # Command-line copy/paste utilities for Wayland
xclip         # Command-line copy/paste utilities for X11
xsel          # Command-line copy/paste utilities for X11


# Replace by your favorite terminal emulator
# If you haven't give kitty a try.
kitty
konsole


# X and/or wayland + a display environment + display manager
# Replace by your favorite choice
wayland
xorg-xwayland
xorg
sddm
plasma-wayland-session


# Common Desktop Applications
chromium
firefox
firefox-i18n-de      # Replace by your language
thunderbird
thunderbird-i18n-de  # Replace by your language
keepassxc
vlc
meld
mpv
youtube-dl
slack
hunspell-de    # Replace by your language
languagetool   # More advanced spell and grammar checking


# If you use a Yubikey
libfido2
pcsclite
hopenpgp-tools
yubico-pam
yubikey-manager
yubikey-manager-qt
yubikey-personalization

en arch linux