The following settings can probably be done with any Linux environment, but the precise details below apply to the Cinnamon window manager
Add some useful things to panel bar at the bottom of the screen
Right click on an empty part of the bar → Add applets to the panel
Add Workspace switcher
Add Window list
Add System Monitor (there are several available, use sysmonitor@orcus). Right-click on it → Settings → only keep the CPU and Memory graphs
Right click on the on the Panel Launchers (the part of the panel with the Firefox, Thunderbird, Terminal and Files) → Add
to add an xterm launcher:
Name: xterm
Command
xterm -ls -sl 1000 -bg black -fg white
Click on the icon in the upper left corner and choose an icon (eg in /usr/share/icons/gnome)