A Gentoo desktop can be as minimal or as feature-rich as you want. Since Gentoo emphasizes customization, the "must-have" applications are usually those that are stable, well-maintained, and integrate well regardless of your desktop environment.

Here's a practical set of applications by category.

Web Browser

• Firefox — Excellent privacy, Wayland support, and extensions.
• Chromium — Great for web compatibility and development.
• Brave — Chromium-based with built-in privacy features.

Terminal

• Kitty
• Alacritty
• Foot (especially for Wayland compositors)
• WezTerm

Text Editor

• Neovim
• Visual Studio Code
• Helix

File Manager

• Dolphin
• Thunar
• PCManFM
• Yazi

Office

• LibreOffice
• OnlyOffice

Media

• mpv
• VLC media player

Images

• GIMP
• Krita
• ImageMagick

PDF

• Zathura
• Okular

Communication

• Thunderbird
• Element
• Signal Desktop
• Discord (if you use it)

Password Manager

• KeePassXC
• Bitwarden

System Utilities

• btop
• htop
• fastfetch
• ncdu
• tmux
• ripgrep
• fd
• fzf
• bat
• eza

Archives

• 7-Zip
• p7zip
• Ark

Development

• Git
• Docker (or rootless alternatives)
• Podman
• CMake
• Ninja

Virtualization

• QEMU
• virt-manager

Audio

• PipeWire
• Helvum
• Easy Effects

Gaming

• Steam
• Lutris
• Heroic Games Launcher
• MangoHud

Clipboard & Screenshots

• wl-clipboard
• grim
• slurp
• Flameshot

Gentoo-specific essentials

Beyond applications, many Gentoo users consider these indispensable:

• eix
• gentoolkit
• eselect
• ccache
• distcc (if compiling across multiple machines)
• smartmontools
• lm-sensors
• powertop
• ufw or a direct nftables configuration

If I were setting up a modern Gentoo desktop today

My default stack would be:

• Desktop: Hyprland or KDE Plasma
• Browser: Firefox
• Terminal: Kitty
• Editor: Neovim
• File manager: Yazi and Dolphin
• Media: mpv
• Documents: Okular
• Passwords: KeePassXC
• System monitoring: btop and fastfetch
• Containers: Podman
• VM management: QEMU with virt-manager
• Gentoo tools: eix, gentoolkit, and ccache.

That combination provides a fast, modern, Wayland-native desktop while staying close to the Unix philosophy that many Gentoo users appreciate.