I think that most of the applications and tools that people expect to be available upon a new install of Ubuntu fall into one of two categories:
1) those included with the latest Ubuntu release
2) those that can are available through automatix.
http://www.getautomatix.com/
This is probably a bit optimistic, but this has held true for me and for most people I’ve seen asking for particular functionality. There is still a list of exceptions, including the lack of a tool to read someone else’s Visio files, but those will either come along in time, or the desperate will come up with a decent work-around and publish it.
So, if you have a new install, what does it take to get automatix and install most of the stuff you probably are looking for?