Through the years, many have tried to create scripts that add codecs and necessary proprietary applications to the default Ubuntu install. Unfortunately, they've mostly done these things in the wrong way. The original New User Script was a kludgy hack that died with its maintainer in the Hoary Hedgehog days, EasyUbuntu simply used wget to get packages from mirrors, ignoring the APT system that would have provided necessary updates, and Automatrix and Ultramatix both were guilty of doing stupid and harmful things without notifying the user.

That said, there are still a few dozen packages that neither Canonical nor the Ubuntu developers can include in the default installation of Ubuntu for various legal reasons. Some of these packages violate content protection laws (such as libdvdcss2), some have patent issues (like ubuntu-restricted-extras), others don't allow for redistribution (such as the Flash plugin), still more violate a number of copyrights (w32codecs/w64codecs), and others have historical legal issues that have since been resolved, but just don't fit in 700 Mb (Java/IcedTea). There are even a few packages in the main repositories that Ubuntu has never included in the default install for whatever reason, despite the fact that they are generally necessary for inclusion (build-essential).

Jim's First Time Script is a little bit of Python that aims to install the most common packages not in the default installation of Ubuntu without damaging your system or doing anything particularly stupid. It simply adds the Universe, Multiverse, Commercial, and Medibuntu repositories and installs packages that are already there.