Mostly it's my preference, but it seems like major software projects usually have an easy install path for Ubuntu (oftentimes a custom PPA, which is an Ubuntu-s

Mostly it's my preference, but it seems like major software projects usually have an easy install path for Ubuntu (oftentimes a custom PPA, which is an Ubuntu-specific feature). But if Ubuntu is supported, Debian oftentimes is as well, so Raspbian would probably be fine. My bigger concern would be the ARM architecture / switch off x86 in general. Even getting Crashplan (a Java program) working was a PITA due to that.