Below is the list of most common packages that are usually required by a Linux/Ubuntu server and is best to install it right away.
Use aptitude command line option
aptitude -y install <package_name>
apache2-utils
backuppc
bind9
cadaver
curl
dovecot-mysql
dovecot-postfix
htop
iftop
imagemagick
imagemagick-doc
iotop
libapache2-svn
logtail
gcc
git
make
mcrypt
nagios-plugins-extra
nagios-snmp-plugins
nagios3
nagios3-doc
nmap
php-pear
php5-curl
php5-gd
php5-gmp
php5-imagick
php5-imap
php5-ldap
php5-mcrypt
php5-sqlite
postfix-mysql
screen
sharutils
smartmontools
sshfs
sqlite
sysvbanner
sysv-rc
sysv-rc-conf
telnet
telnetd
unzip
zip
libgs9
libgs9-common
traceroute
wget
build-essential
zlib1g-dev
libyaml-dev
libssl-dev
libgdbm-dev
libreadline-dev
libncurses5-dev
libffi-dev curl
redis-server
checkinstall
libxml2-dev
libxslt-dev
libcurl4-openssl-dev
libicu-dev
logrotate