Lyx - cross platform core toolkit for scientific and technical writing?

[Graham Smith]

The recent thread on graphics formats has got me thinking about what 
would might be considered a core (cross platform) toolkit for Lyx users.

I tend to work with Emacs for general note taking etc,  and  Open Office 
when I feel the need for an "Office" application, and Freemind for 
brainstorming. I also use combination of Zotero and Jabref to manage 
reference material.

Although not really part of a Lyx toolkit most my graphics are generated 
in R. However, sometimes this can be rather tedious. I have recently 
come across matplotlib for python, and am having some success with it, 
but not sure whether I shouldn't focus my efforts on expanding my R skills.

Equally PSTricks given its Latex, may be worth learning as any increased 
understanding of Latex has benefits for using Lyx.

Or is fig a better general purpose option.  For photo editing GIMP, or 
is there a lighter weight option more suited to the tweaks that we need 
to do to prepare a photo for publication.

We seemed spoilt for choice, which is good, but equally rather confusing 
as many programs have similar but different features and many features 
that overlap. And of course I may well have missed the obvious

So would anyone like to suggest a basic Lyx toolkit, that would cover 
the range of things we tend to do when producing scientific papers and 
technical reports.  The list of "Lyx support" programs that you 
automatically install when you get a new computer.

Many thanks,

Graham