for a typical debian/ubuntu install… generated from my SunBlade's debian install

selected-packages-for-server.sh

apt-get install adduser aptitude aspell-en bash bc bind9-host binutils bsdmainutils bsdutils bzip2 cpio curl cvs cvsps dash deborphan dialog dictionaries-common diffutils dnsutils docbook-xml file-roller findutils finger ftp ftplib3 fuse-utils gawk gcc geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual geoclue-yahoo geoip-database gettext gettext-base git git-annex git-arch git-core git-cvs git-svn gnupg gnupg-curl gzip html2text imagemagick install-info iproute iptables iputils-ping irb1.8 iso-codes less locate lockfile-progs lsof lynx lzma mailx make man-db manpages manpages-dev mtools myspell-en-us mysql-client mysql-client-5.1 mysql-common ncurses-base ncurses-bin net-tools netcat-traditional openssh-blacklist-extra openssh-client openssh-server openssl openssl-blacklist patch perl php5 php5-cli php5-common php5-curl php5-mysql php5-suhosin policykit-1 popoppler-utils procps psmisc python python2.6 rarian-compat readline-common reportbug ri ri1.8 rsync ruby ruby-elisp ruby-full ruby1.8 ruby1.8-dev ruby1.8-elis screen ssh ssl-cert sudo tar tcpdumptelnet traceroute unzip uuid vim w3m wget whiptail whois zip bash-completion