1. Update the system
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade

2. Install Aptitude, Synaptic and Gdebi
sudo apt-get install aptitude synaptic gdebi-core

3.Install Office Suite
sudo apt-get install libreoffice

4.Media and codecs
sudo apt-get install xubuntu-restricted-extras libavcodec-extra vlc

5.Speedup GUI

Create a file named .gtkrc-2.0 in your home directory and paste in the following lines

gtk-menu-popup-delay = 0
gtk-menu-popdown-delay = 0
gtk-menu-bar-popup-delay = 0
gtk-enable-animations = 0
gtk-timeout-expand = 0
gtk-timeout-initial = 0
gtk-timeout-repeat = 0

6.Make other partition writable
$ sudo chmod -Rv a+w /media/

7.Install rar/zip
sudo apt-get install rar unzip zip