Essential Packages for Linux and Unix

1. Linux Distro

Ubuntu Arch Linux Mint Fedora Kali Linux Debian openSuSE CentOS Oracle Linux Manjaro Rocky Linux AlmaLinux Amazon Linux Red Hat Enterprise Linux

2. A Comprehensive List of Linux Distributions

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) 88,757 Packages Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) 80,566 Packages Arch User Repository (AUR) 90,983 Packages Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) 79,010 Packages Linux Mint 20.3 (Una) 75,783 Packages Fedora 36 70,928 Packages Fedora 35 72,396 Packages Kali Linux 68,125 Packages Debian 11 (Bullseye) 60,384 Packages Linux Mint 21 (Vanessa) 80,783 Packages Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri) 64,636 Packages Ubuntu 22.10 (Kinetic Kudu) 69,412 Packages Fedora 34 68,716 Packages Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) 61,875 Packages Debian 10 (Buster) 58,416 Packages openSuSE Tumbleweed 55,950 Packages Ubuntu 21.04 (Hirsute Hippo) 36,998 Packages openSUSE Leap 43,364 Packages Ubuntu 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla) 33,295 Packages CentOS 8 / RHEL 8 15,935 Packages Arch Linux 13,398 Packages Oracle Linux 8 20,559 Packages CentOS Stream 8 20,048 Packages Manjaro 13,991 Packages Rocky Linux 8 18,356 Packages AlmaLinux 8 18,241 Packages Oracle Linux 9 30,033 Packages Rocky Linux 9 27,928 Packages Amazon Linux 2 8,700 Packages CentOS 7 / RHEL 7 650 Packages Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat) 72,987 Packages Debian 12 (Bookworm) 64,997 Packages Linux Mint 21.3 (Virginia) 80,750 Packages Ubuntu 23.10 (Mantic Minotaur) 72,198 Packages Fedora 39 75,680 Packages AlmaLinux 9 28,439 Packages Fedora 38 77,044 Packages Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 (RHEL 9) 23,719 Packages CentOS Stream 9 28,652 Packages Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 (RHEL 8) 14,720 Packages

3. Most Popular Packages

telegram-desktop Fast and secure messaging application

Architecture: amd64 Size: 24.03MB Version: 3.1.1+ds-1~deb11u2

Debian 11 (Bullseye)
wireguard Fast, modern, secure kernel VPN tunnel (metapackage)

Architecture: all Size: 3.19KB Version: 1.0.20200513-1~20.04.2

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa)
pulseaudio PulseAudio sound server

Architecture: amd64 Size: 0.78MB Version: 1:13.99.1-1ubuntu3.13

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa)
intel-mkl Intel® Math Kernel Library (Intel® MKL)

Architecture: amd64 Size: 11.47KB Version: 2020.0.166-1

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa)
flameshot Powerful yet simple-to-use screenshot software

Architecture: amd64 Size: 0.27MB Version: 0.6.0+git20191001-2

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa)
kodi Open Source Home Theatre (executable binaries)

Architecture: amd64 Size: 22.87KB Version: 2:19.4+dfsg1-2

Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish)
pulseeffects Audio effects for PulseAudio applications

Architecture: amd64 Size: 0.77MB Version: 4.7.1-2

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa)
scrcpy Display and control your Android device

Architecture: amd64 Size: 28.73KB Version: 1.12.1+ds-1

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa)
php-sodium PHP wrapper for the Sodium cryptographic library

Architecture: amd64 Size: 3.18KB Version: 2.0.23-9+ubuntu20.04.1+deb.sury.org+1

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa)
wireguard Fast, modern, secure kernel VPN tunnel (metapackage)

Architecture: all Size: 7.97KB Version: 1.0.20210223-1

Debian 11 (Bullseye)
gnome Full GNOME Desktop Environment, with extra components

Architecture: amd64 Size: 2.52KB Version: 1:42+3

Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish)
hyprland A dynamic tiling Wayland compositor based on wlroots that doesn't sacrifice on its looks.

Version: 0.12.1beta-1

Arch User Repository (AUR)
clang-12 C, C++ and Objective-C compiler

Architecture: amd64 Size: 67.07KB Version: 1:12.0.0-3ubuntu1~20.04.5

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa)
libssl1.1 Secure Sockets Layer toolkit - shared libraries This package is part of the OpenSSL project's implementation of the SSL and TLS cryptographic protocol...

Architecture: amd64 Size: 1.38MB Version: 1.1.1l-1ubuntu1

Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish)
pipewire PipeWire multimedia server

Architecture: amd64 Size: 0.21MB Version: 0.2.7-1

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa)
nvidia-cuda-toolkit-gcc NVIDIA CUDA development toolkit (GCC compatibility)

Architecture: amd64 Size: 15.95KB Version: 11.5.1-1ubuntu1

Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish)
paraview Parallel Visualization Application

Architecture: amd64 Size: 43.93MB Version: 5.10.0~rc1-1build3

Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish)
ibus-bamboo A Vietnamese IME for IBus using Bamboo Engine. Bộ gõ tiếng Việt mã nguồn mở hỗ trợ hầu hết các bảng mã thông dụng, các kiểu gõ tiếng Việt phổ biến, bỏ...

Architecture: amd64 Size: 6.75KB Version: 0.6.8-0~202011290651~ubuntu20.04.1

Ubuntu 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla)
telegram-desktop Fast and secure messaging application

Architecture: amd64 Size: 24.31MB Version: 3.1.1+ds-1~ubuntu20.04.1

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa)
discover KDE and Plasma resources management GUI

Architecture: x86_64 Size: 0KB Version: 6.0.1-1

Arch Linux
thunderbird Email, RSS and newsgroup client with integrated spam filter

Architecture: amd64 Size: 59.25MB Version: 1:115.6.0+build2-0ubuntu0.20.04.1

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa)