There is no "best". There is only "best for your needs". I'd recommend changing the title, lest people take it wrong and derail the thread. If by "works" you m

There is no "best". There is only "best for your needs". I'd recommend changing the title, lest people take it wrong and derail the thread. If by "works" you mean "has a familiar and mostly-polished interface", then I would agree. If you like Mint so far, go with that. To give a comparison on the "other end" of the user experience spectrum, try Crunchbang. It is the same underlying ecosystem as Mint (Debian), but builds itself out of a handful of more minimal components. It's my go-to dev distro because it's just enough to get work done in, and nothing more. If you've tried "the big common ones", then you've hit 90% of the mainstream options. If you need something special, unique or custom beyond those, you definitely would have identified those needs in your post.