I use Ubuntu on my laptop. I've found that I typically don't need the latest and greatest versions of various software, and have been happy with 12.04 LTS. I suspect that my next version will be 16.04 LTS. I value the Long Term Support releases because I can stick with the same system for several years and still get security updates. At this point in my life / career, I'm not nearly as interested in with tinkering and tweaking things and would rather have something that generally works and is stable.

I've toyed with the idea of going with CentOS on a desktop, but I think that release cycle may be a little too slow. Ubuntu's LTS every two years gives me the opportunity to upgrade sooner if there's a compelling reason (e.g., Docker support).

I do web development at a consultancy (lots of different projects in a variety of languages / environments) and have in the past been able to do a pretty decent job isolating different client applications while running them locally. However, these days I'm moving more to Vagrant for some of the heavier applications and likely to Docker for some of the lighter ones.