Well, I suppose it all depends on what you want to do with your system. Are you a coder or general tech worker? Content creator? Just using it for basic web browsing and media? Gaming?
The operating system works just fine as is, and doesn’t need much tinkering, and software you’ll install depends heavily on your use case.
How comfy are you with the command line? There are some handy utilities I could suggest, but depending on your use case they might be completely irrelevant.
Also, graphics card? Multi monitor? What’s your setup like?
Its a laptop, single monitor, I planning use it to work, play, and I letning som code (Python), respect to command line i have no problem executing some actions (like update, upgrade, managing snapshots, moving files).
Right on. Well, Btop as a system monitor is fantastic. Nala is a command line front end for apt which makes you command line update and install experience prettier and more human legible.
Luckily for you, you won’t be using nvidia, because nvidia drivers, Optimus, and multi monitor support would be a big wall of text, ask me how I know. Even though it’s all supposed to “just work” on mint, I had a lot of issues. I’ve recently abandoned mint for endeavouros after the upgrade to 21.2 made steam unlaunchable. If you’re planning to use steam, I recommend the system package over the flatpak.
The flatpak versions of signal, Bitwarden, Discord, Zoom, etc are all great and foolproof if you use any of those services.
Anything else more specific that you think you’re looking for? I don’t code so I’m not much help in that regard.
For large GUI-based programs such as photo editing, drawing (Krita), 3D modeling (Blender), etc, there are 3 main ways to install them, each with pros and cons:
using apt
Pros: integrates with system libraries, version is curated by Mint/Ubuntu maintainers and usually more stable
Cons: lags a few versions behind upstream, especially when the next Ubuntu LTS is nearing release it can be quite out-of-date
download a deb or tar.gz release from the project's website or GitHub
Pros: you get the latest version
Cons: does not update automatically
using flatpak
Pros: has the latest version, solves some visual compatibility issues (Qt apps on GNOME for example)
Cons: takes more disk space because dependencies are duplicated, sandboxing can break some features
Personally I try to use apt first, unless the version is really old then I try the tar.gz install and finally flatpak. Which method you choose is up to you.