Recently, I’ve been changing distros about once a year. These are the things I install every time:
hdparm - I use this to disable APM on my HDD which makes annoying sounds when it’s enabled. (Yes, my computer is old and still uses an HDD as the system drive.)
KeePassXC - My preferred password manager.
VeraCrypt - My external drives are encrypted with this.
Recently, I’ve been changing distros about once a year. These are the things I install every time:
As for the config files, I always start fresh.