This is the software I like to have on various platforms, and is a work in progress (and so may morph wildly over time according to my personal whims) that I've started mostly for my own use. Recently I used this list in rebuilding my personal workstation after an awful day. Documentation saves (as do backups)!
My personal workstation and laptop are currently running Linux Mint 22.3 (Zena, based on Ubuntu 24.04), moderately tailored for my own use. Previously, I was on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Desktop. For me, Mint requires considerably less customization to be tolerable, and that made switching to it a lot less painful than it otherwise could have been.
I prefer distro packages where available and not too far out of date, then the latest vendor official packages or binaries when I can can find them (except where it would be too disruptive: like when they overwrite critical dependencies). I will turn to vendor AppImages where packages