First off installing Ubuntu 18.10 desktop. It’s a sane default and I won’t have to do too much fiddling to get rolling. It’s what customers are likely to use and should have decent hardware support. So far display is perfect, WiFi working, pointer nib responds, and Bluetooth connections are a-ok.
Next, dev tools: gcc, g++, Docker, nvm, nodejs, yarn, zsh, vs code, jdk, platform clis (AWS, digitalocean, GCP), terraform, kubectl, cmake, hashicorp vault