I am currently using Linux Mint (after a long stint of using MX Linux) after learning it handles Nvidia graphics cards flawlessly, which I am grateful for. Whatever grief I have given Ubuntu in the past, I take it back because when they make something work, it is solid.
Anyways, like most distros these days, Flatpaks show up alongside native packages in the package manager / app store. I used to have a bias towards getting the natively packed version, but these days, I am choosing Flatpaks, precisely because I know they will be the latest version.
This includes Blender, Cura, Prusaslicer, and just now QBittorrent. I know this is probably dumb, but I choose the version based on which has the nicer icon.
I’ve been using NixOS with flatpaks and distrobox and have had pretty much the same experience. NixOS provides rock solid base system, services, and CLI tools that are easy to configure and flatpaks provide the rest of the desktop applications.
One neat feature of installing eveything through flatpak is that you can update applications individually without having to upgrade the whole system.