My strategy is to always install program with flatpak, SDKs are also installed as flatpak, find graphical alternatives to command line programs. I don’t use command line a lot, so I don’t need fancy tools for it.
I only have one system package installed for inputting unicode math symbols. So that I have a clean and easily migratable system.
I might add, everyway actually seek to “consolidate” all the older ways, and always ends up adding to the ways needing to be consolidated.
Installing on a old laptop is great because eventually after you get a more serious machine, you probably got enough experience to choose your distros.
Linux mint is certainly the most promising option, especially if you are just using the laptop, and don’t have any external monitors setup.
I think mixing app and system dependencies is not the best idea, and Linux desktop is still fighting its impact.
When all the apps on a consumer laptop is expected to depend on the same dependencies, the system likely run into dependency hell, which means many apps needs to be downgraded in order to keep older apps working.
This mixture of system dependency and app dependency also prevents users to use the the latest version of an app on a hyper stable base system.
Flatpak basically aim to solve this problem, where each app chooses their own dependencies, so you don’t need to downgrade all your app just because one app depends on python 2.7.
It is also insecure with possiblity to crash your computer, the only advantage is that it is cheap.