Linux Mint

literally, none of it is necessary. it's just an opinionated guide for an initial set up.

mint already has functional, sane defaults that 'just work' for most users.

the post-install window that pops up in mint covers the things most users might want to do right away, like initial updates, setting up timeshift (which is nice but not absolutely 'required' to use mint), running the driver utility and so forth.