Good day everyone. I've installed Zorin OS 18 (Core) in my Acer Aspire 5 Laptop (A514-52K) and used it since its released day.
My question is, What are the things I should do or a beginner "must" do after installing this distro?

Good day everyone. I've installed Zorin OS 18 (Core) in my Acer Aspire 5 Laptop (A514-52K) and used it since its released day.
My question is, What are the things I should do or a beginner "must" do after installing this distro?

Changing your default DNS is a great idea for privacy and I fully recommend it.
However, a lot of things online will recommend Cloudflare and Google public DNS. While they are certainly quick due to both being Internet behemoths, I wouldn't say Cloudflare are a great choice and I would specifically recommend against Google, because they're both Internet behemoths with much-documented scummy behaviour.
Also, carefully consider the type of DNS. A lot of guides only touch on IPv4 DNS, and some only talk about standard (see: plain text) DNS which is trivial for anyone to monitor what you're doing. There are DNS technologies which encrypt your requests like HTTPS does - DoT, DoH, DNSCrypt, etc. - to make it that extra bit harder for your ISP and various Internet behemoths to collect data on what websites you're visiting. They're awkward to setup on Linux though, unfortunately.
If at all possible use an encrypted DNS, but at the very least configure both IPv4 and IPv6 DNS.
Personally, I use AdGuard. They provide most flavours of DNS encryption as well as standard DNS, with and without backed-in adblock and malware protection. They also have various other tools and products which I use such as an Android app, managed DNS dashboard, a VPN service, etc.
Consider customising the order of preference for installation package types in Gnome Software.
First, get the current order of preference:
gsettings get org.gnome.software packaging-format-preference
Using the "Try Zorin" option of the 17 ISO, the output is ['flatpak:flathub', 'flatpak', 'deb', 'snap'].
Then rearrange the output and plug it back in using set, probably something like:
gsettings set org.gnome.software packaging-format-preference "['deb', 'flatpak:flathub', 'flatpak', 'snap']"
This won't affect the apt command, though, and I'm not even sure if it will bypass Canonical's scummy and fraudulent fake apt installers that just silently trick you into using their garbage snaps when you had explicitly asked for the native release in the Software store. They're already intentionally, wilfully, and maliciously circumventing user choice with apt so I would be shocked if they aren't also doing it in gnome Software somehow.
Please also review this thread:
My Opinion Piece: What any person must do post install is highly individual.
You can review other opinions, good ideas, maybe some not so good ideas... on this topic and see what appeals to you.
What meets your needs as an end user.
And what new directions to explore.
Thanks for this Sir. I'll take some notes from it.
I'll try AdGuard. Thanks for your reply. I'll do some note-taking for the things I should do later. ![]()
This first thing I can think of, is to set your downloads to "Main Server" in Software & Updates...
If your a gamer or do production workloads, make sure you set your power settings to Performance, and make sure you've selected your Nvidia GPU driver, if you have Nvidia. If you have AMD, your driver is already in the kernel.
If you have Nvidia, also set "Preferred Mode" to "Performance" for the GPU as well, in "Nvidia X Server Settings."
If you have no Nvidia or AMD GPU, and your system uses an integrated GPU, I believe the Nouveau driver is for those kind of systems.
Anyways, thats the first things that I can think of, right off the bat. Hope it helps.
Turn the Firewall (GUFW) =ON
Firewall is =OFF by default, I assume devs have not moved the location of Firewall setting again since this time.