acpid - Modern computers support the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI)
to allow intelligent power management on your system and to query battery and
configuration status.

ACPID is a completely flexible, totally extensible daemon for delivering
ACPI events. It listens on a file (/proc/acpi/event) and when an event
occurs, executes programs to handle the event. The programs it executes
are configured through a set of configuration files, which can be
dropped into place by packages or by the admin.

alsa-utils - This package contains utilities for configuring and using ALSA, including:
* amixer: command line mixer
* alsamixer: curses mixer
* amidi: read from and write to ALSA RawMIDI ports
* aplay, arecord: command line playback and recording
* aplaymidi, arecordmidi: command line MIDI playback and recording
* aconnect, aseqnet, aseqdump: command line MIDI sequencer control

ALSA is the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture.

console-setup - This package provides the Linux console with the same
keyboard configuration scheme as the X Window System. As a result,
there is no need to duplicate or change the keyboard files just to
make simple customizations such as the use of dead keys, the key
functioning as AltGr or Compose key, the key(s) to switch between
Latin and non-Latin mode, etc.

The package also contains console fonts supporting many of the
world's languages. It provides an unified set of font faces - the
classic VGA, the simplistic Fixed, and the cleaned Terminus,
TerminusBold and TerminusBoldVGA.

cpufrequtils - This package contains two utilities for inspecting and setting the
cpu frequency through both the sysfs and procfs CPUFreq kernel
interfaces.

By default it also enable CPUFreq at boot time if the correct cpu
driver is found.

cron - The cron daemon is a background process that runs particular programs at
particular times (for example, every minute, day, week or month), as
specific in the in a crontab. By default, users may also create
crontabs of their own so that processes are run on their behalf.

Users may also install crontabs so that processes are run on
their behalf, though this feature can be disabled or restricted to
particular users.

Output from the commands is usually mailed to the system administrator
(or to the user in question); you should probably install a mail system
as well so that you can receive these messages.

cups - The Common UNIX Printing System (or CUPS(tm)) is a printing system and
general replacement for lpd and the like. It supports the Internet
Printing Protocol (IPP), and has its own filtering driver model for
handling various document types.

This package provides the CUPS scheduler/daemon and related files.

dbus - D-Bus is a message bus, used for sending messages between applications.
Conceptually, it fits somewhere in between raw sockets and CORBA in
terms of complexity.

D-Bus supports broadcast messages, asynchronous messages (thus
decreasing latency), authentication, and more. It is designed to be
low-overhead; messages are sent using a binary protocol, not using
XML. D-Bus also supports a method call mapping for its messages, but
it is not required; this makes using the system quite simple.

It comes with several bindings, including GLib, Python, Qt and Java.

This package contains the D-Bus daemon and related utilities.

dhcdbd - dhcdbd provides a D-Bus interface to dhclient, the DHCP client from ISC,
so applications such as NetworkManager can query and control dhclient.
This allows an application-neutral interface for such operations.

eeepc-acpi-scripts - This package adds support to the special features of Asus Eee PC series of
laptops. These include sleep (suspend) and hotkeys such as wireless,
brightness, mute, volume, video output toggle and the 'soft' keys available in
some models.

firehol - Generates generic firewalls with an extremely simple but powerful
configuration language, enabling you to design any kind of local
or routing stateful packet filtering firewall with ease.

Firehol does not support ipv6.

fuse - userspace filesystem framework for Linux

gpm - This package provides a daemon that captures mouse events when the system
console is active, and delivers events to applications through a library.

By default, the daemon provides a 'selection' mode, so that
cut-and-paste with the mouse works on the console just as it does
under X.

hal - HAL provides an abstract view on hardware.

This abstraction layer is simply an interface that makes it possible to
add support for new devices and new ways of connecting devices to the
computer, without modifying every application that uses the device.
It maintains a list of devices that currently exist, and can provide
information about those upon request.

halevt - halevt is a daemon that acts as a policy agent on top of HAL. It
listens to HAL events and reacts with user-configurable
actions. It is a reimplementation of ivman project.

Among other things, halevt is useful as an automount daemon that will mount
removable devices but with a much smaller set of dependencies than tools such
as gnome-volume-manager.

hdparm - Get/set device parameters for Linux SATA/IDE drives.
Primary use is for enabling irq-unmasking and IDE multiplemode.

ifplugd - ifplugd is a daemon which will automatically configure your ethernet device
when a cable is plugged in and automatically de-configure it if the cable is
pulled out. This is useful on laptops with onboard network adapters, since it
will only configure the interface when a cable is really connected. Features
include:

* syslog support
* Multiple ethernet interface support
* Uses Debian's native ifup/ifdown programs
* Small executable size and memory footprint
* Option to beep when the cable is unplugged or plugged
* Option to beep when the interface configuration succeeds or fails
* Can be configured to ignore short unplugged or plugged periods
* Configure WLAN devices (on detecting a successful association to an AP)

ifupdown - This package provides the tools ifup and ifdown which may be used to
configure (or, respectively, deconfigure) network interfaces based on
interface definitions in the file /etc/network/interfaces.

irda-utils - This package contains userspace utilities to manage and handle infrared
devices. It includes irattach, findchip, irdadump, irdaping and irpsion5.
OBEX tools are removed since 0.9.5. If you need to use IrOBEX,
use openobex-apps package.

irqbalance - irqbalance is a daemon that distributes interrupts over the processors
and cores you have in your computer system, which can lead to better
performance and IO balance on SMP systems.

The design goal of irqbalance is to find a balance between power
savings and optimal performance. To a large degree, the work
irqbalance does is invisible to you; if irqbalance performs its job
right, nobody will ever notice it is there.

irqbalance is especially useful on systems with multi-core processors,
as interrupts will typically only be serviced by the first core.

IRQ load balancing isn't worthwhile until you have more than one
socket, or more than two CPU cores.

kbd - This package allows you to set up the Linux console, change the font,
resize text mode virtual consoles and remap the keyboard.

You will probably want to install a set of data files, such as the one
in the “console-data” package.

keyboard-configuration - This package maintains the keyboard preferences in
/etc/default/keyboard. Other packages can use the information
provided by this package in order to configure the keyboard on the
console or in X Window.

lighttpd - lighttpd is a small webserver and fast webserver developed with
security in mind and a lot of features.
It has support for
* CGI, FastCGI and SSI
* virtual hosts
* URL rewriting
* authentication (plain files, htpasswd, ldap)
* transparent content compression
* conditional configuration
and configuration is straight-forward and easy.

module-init-tools - This package contains a set of programs for loading, inserting, and
removing kernel modules for Linux.

mpd - Music Player Daemon (MPD) is a server that allows remote access for
playing audio files (Ogg-Vorbis, FLAC, MP3, Wave, and AIFF), streams
(Ogg-Vorbis, MP3) and managing playlists. Gapless playback, buffered
output, and crossfading support is also included. The design focus is
on integrating a computer into a stereo system that provides control
for music playback over a TCP/IP network. The goals are to be easy to
install and use, to have minimal resource requirements (it has been
reported to run fine on a Pentium 75), and to remain stable and
flexible.

The daemon is controlled through a client which need not run on the
same computer mpd runs on. The separate client and server design
allows users to choose a user interface that best suites their tastes
independently of the underlying daemon (this package) which actually
plays music.

pcmciautils - This package provides PCMCIA initialisation tools for Linux 2.6.13-rc1 or
later, replacing the old pcmcia-cs tools used with earlier kernel versions.
PCMCIA cards are commonly used in laptops to provide expanded capabilities
such as network connections, modems, increased memory, etc.

To use PCMCIA you need to have kernel modules available to support
it. These are included in the stock Debian 2.6 kernel packages. You
will most likely also need udev, although it isn't always required.

The wireless-tools package is required by many wireless network adapters.

policykit - PolicyKit is an application-level toolkit for defining and handling the policy
that allows unprivileged processes to speak to privileged processes.

It is a framework for centralizing the decision making process with respect to
granting access to privileged operations (like calling the HAL Mount() method)
for unprivileged (desktop) applications.

powersaved - Provides battery, temperature, ac, cpufreq (SpeedStep, Powernow!)
control and monitoring.
Powersaved is a policy daemon which defines what to do on certain power
management events, like power button presses or ac plug/unplug.
It relies on HAL/pm-utils to do the heavy lifting.

pppd-dns - The Point-to-Point Protocol provides a standard way to transmit
datagrams over a serial link, as well as a standard way for the machines
at either end of the link to negotiate various optional characteristics
of the link.

This package is most commonly used to manage a modem for dial-up or
certain kinds of broadband connections.

procps - These are utilities to browse the /proc filesystem, which is not a real file
system but a way for the kernel to provide information about the status of
entries in its process table. (e.g. running, stopped or"zombie")
Both command line and full screen utilities are provided. Ncurses is needed
for the full screen utilities. More information can be found at procps
website
========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://procps.sf.net/"
linktext was:"http://procps.sf.net/"
====================================


This package includes the following utilities: top, uptime, tload,
free, vmstat, watch, skill, pmap, pgrep, slabtop and pwdx.

rsync - rsync is a program that allows files to be copied to and from remote
machines in much the same way as rcp. It has many more options than
rcp, and uses the rsync remote-update protocol to greatly speed up
file transfers when the destination file already exists.

The rsync remote-update protocol allows rsync to transfer just the
differences between two sets of files across the network link.

This package also includes rsyncd daemon functionality.

rsyslog - Rsyslog is an enhanced syslogd supporting, amongst others:
* reliable syslog over TCP and SSL/TLS
* on-demand disk buffering
* email alerting
* writing to MySQL or PostgreSQL databases (via separate output plugins)
* permitted sender lists
* filtering on any part of the syslog message
* on-the-wire message compression
* fine grained output format control
* backup log destinations

It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be used as a drop-in
replacement. Its advanced features make it suitable for enterprise-class,
encryption protected syslog relay chains while at the same time being very
easy to setup for the novice user.

saned - SANE stands for"Scanner Access Now Easy" and is an application
programming interface (API) that provides standardized access to any
raster image scanner hardware (flatbed scanner, hand-held scanner,
video- and still-cameras, frame-grabbers, etc.). The SANE standard is
free and its discussion and development are open to everybody. The
current source code is written to support several operating systems,
including GNU/Linux, OS/2, Win32 and various Unices and is available
under the GNU General Public License (commercial applications and
backends are welcome, too, however).

This package includes the command line frontend scanimage, the saned
server and the sane-find-scanner utility, along with their documentation.

slim - desktop-independent graphical login manager for X11

SLiM aims to be light and simple, although completely configurable through
themes and an option file. It is particularly suitable for machines that
don't require remote logins.

sudo - Sudo is a program designed to allow a sysadmin to give limited root
privileges to users and log root activity. The basic philosophy is to give
as few privileges as possible but still allow people to get their work done.

This version is built with minimal shared library dependencies, use the
sudo-ldap package instead if you need LDAP support.

svgalib-bin - svgalib provides graphics capabilities to programs running on the
system console, without going through the X Window System. It uses
direct access to the video hardware to provide low-level access to
the standard VGA and SVGA graphics modes. Only works with some
video hardware; use with caution.

transmission-daemon - Transmission is a simple BitTorrent client. It features a very simple,
intuitive interface (gui and command-line) on top on an efficient,
cross-platform back-end.

This package contains the transmission-daemon and the associated control
interface, transmission-remote.

udev - udev is a daemon which dynamically creates and removes device nodes from
/dev/, handles hotplug events and loads drivers at boot time. It replaces
the hotplug package and requires a 2.6.18 or newer kernel version.

usplash - Usplash is a userspace application that uses the Linux framebuffer interface
to draw a splash screen at boot. It has a companion utility that is able to
send commands to usplash, allowing information about the bootup sequence to
be displayed in a more attractive way.*not sure if it is on final*

wicd - Wicd is a general-purpose network configuration server which aims
to provide a simple but flexible interface for connecting to networks.
Its features include:
wide variety of settings.
* ability to connect to (and maintain profiles for) both wired and
wireless networks;
* support for many encryption schemes, including WEP, WPA, WPA2 and
custom schemes;
* wireless-tools compatibility;
* tray icon showing network activity and signal strength;
* lack of GNOME dependencies (although it does require GTK+), making it
easy to use in Xfce, Fluxbox, Openbox, Enlightenment, etc.

This package contains the daemon needed to run Wicd.

x11-common - x11-common contains the filesystem infrastructure required for further
installation of the X Window System in any configuration; it does not
provide a full installation of clients, servers, libraries, and utilities
required to run the X Window System.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some of the above are optional and can be disabled from the Control Center > System > Choose Services or even removed/purged from the system. Useful for people how have very limited RAM resources.

Examples: lighttpd and mpd. Also cpufrequtils/loadcpufreq (laptop or modern cpus only?), cups (printers only), eeepc-acpi-scripts (eeepc only), irda-utils (infrared - like a remote-control, I believe - only), irqbalance (multi-core cpus only), pcmciautils (laptops only), powersaved (laptops only?), ppd-dns (PPPoE/DSL broadband), saned (scanners only) and wicd (wireless/multiple network interfaces).

Thank you for your hard work. A very useful list!

Thank you. It's a useful list also because many of these packages can be completely removed from the system if they won't be used.