i usually have dogmeat, of course he can't use anything. but jericho or charon can. i give them power armor. lately i have given them the victory rifle, that seems to work for them. so what do you give your sidekicks?

All companions get 5 stims, one food item, 2 Jet and 10 Buffout. I keep these items replenished regularly.

Currently have two companions:

Jericho
Hellfire Armor
Boogeyman's Hood
Heavy Incinerator: This actually is a good way to control leveling, as I barely have to do any long-range action, I just keep enemies off of Jericho and let him go hog wild.
Lucky 8 Ball

Clover
Hellfire Armor
Lucky Shades
Red's Bandana
Shiskebab for sure
A3-21's Plasma Rifle
I keep her close to me because she has died many times on previous characters.

Don't have Charon at the moment, but I usually give him Hellfire Armor, Lincoln's Hat and let him keep his default shotgun, which is amazing.

For all of the companions I usually try to outfit all of them with Hellfire Armor and Helmet. Sometimes I switch things up and equip one of them with a T51-b or a Hellfire Armor, Recon Helmet and Sunglasses/Biker Goggles if I want their face to show.

Jericho has Big Guns and Small Guns tagged. Personally I'd give him Eugene or Vengeance, but a Heavy Incinerator as mentioned above is just as good. His default CAR is also pretty good in a pinch.

Fawkes is fine with his default Gatling Laser

RL-3 can't equip any weapons, but his defaults are decent and if you have Broken Steel installed he's will have uber hitpoints making him virtually unkillable. Same goes true for Fawkes (not that he really needed a buff) and Dogmeat. If you have broken steel and don't want to worry about your companions getting killed, Fawkes, RL-3 and Dogmeat are definitely the ones to go with.

SP Cross is pretty good with any of the Big Guns, she has Energy tagged too so she also does good with any of the unique Energy Weapons. For armor it's either Hellfire or the T-51b. If you give her Vengeance or the Precision Gatling Laser and enough ammo, She will be doing as much damage as Fawkes.

Charon is good with his default Combat Shotgun though if he needs an extra kick, the Reservist's Rifle is pretty cool

For Butch and Clover it's definitely Sniper Rifles from afar since Clover's default weapon svcks and Butch, sadly has no default weapons. They do well with the Victory Rifle and/or the Reservist's Rifle (There's a glitch where you can spawn multiple copies of this if you shoot the rifle from the Reservist's hands, retrieve the rifle, wait 3 days for it to respawn and then lather/rinse/repeat)

I usually always have Clover as a companion. Not because she's particularly useful, but just because I like the idea of having a brainwashed slave concubine/bodyguard for my evil character's companion. I always dress her in Raider Sadist Armor because it looks sixy (I pretend the severed hands tied to the belt are the hands of all the poor schmucks who tried to lay a hand on her master), and I usually give her 5 stimpacks, a drink and food, 10 caps, a shishkebab, and either a Chinese Assault Rifle or one of those Double Barrel Shotguns from Point Lookout. The Double Barrel Shotguns work best for her in my opinion as they are really powerful and she perfers close-range weapons.