

For the swap space, yes that’s for when you run out of RAM. 48GiB is plenty of RAM, so you should be fine without it. I have 32GiB of RAM on my system and have been running without swap for ages without issue.
Hardening guides like that are mostly designed for things like web servers which are connected to the public internet and need higher scrutiny. The default configuration for distros like Mint should be secure enough for the average user.
However, don’t feel invincible and run random code from random sites. Both Windows and Linux can’t protect you against malicious code you run yourself.
Having organised partitions is the kind of thing that people obsessed with organisation do. For most people, the default partitioning scheme is fine. However, as always, remember to keep backups of important data.
For installing software, Mint has a Software Centre (which is distinct from the Snap Store). I’d recommend installing software using that for the average user.
In Mint, there are three main types of packages:
- Debian/APT packages, which are provided by Mint (well, technically by the Debian distro and they trickle down to Mint, but technicalities). Not all software is available from Mint’s repos and they may be out of date.
- Flatpak packages, which are provided either by developers themselves or dedicated fans. They are usually more up to date and have a degree of sandboxing.
- Snap packages, which are controlled by a company named Canonical. As of late, Canonical has been a bit “ehhhh”, so there’s pushback against Snap. Mint has it disabled and has their reasoning explained here: https://linuxmint-user-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/snap.html
Mint’s software centre is able to install both Debian and Flatpak packages. I’d recommend using it where possible since it allows automatic upgrades and easier installation/uninstallation.





Most applications that are Electron either only support Windows or also want to support Android, iOS and Web. I assume there is some toolkit out there that supports everything, but honestly HTML5 is more well known and tested.