I would either go for Fedora (up-to-date but pretty stable) or NixOS. NixOS has a very interesting approach of having a (smal set) of config file(s) to setup a

I would either go for Fedora (up-to-date but pretty stable) or NixOS. NixOS has a very interesting approach of having a (smal set) of config file(s) to setup an entire system as it was. Too me as a developer this is very appealing, because I don't need to care too much about backup up the OS or settings, but only the config files and the files in /home/. I would also add docker, this helps a lot with development. Oh, and if you need a VM (e.g. Windows) stay away from Virtual Box - just use qemu, which runs the VM up to 300% faster.