Not sure about the Ubuntu recommendation... I have used the LTS releases on my laptop for 5 years without reinstall or any major issues (I'm a student, so the complexity of what I use increased gradually), but the latest update f*cked a lot of things up. Didn't have time to do a reinstall yet, but i sense it's highly needed. So Debian might be a better option at the time, especially as stuff is expected to be tinkered with more (switch to Wayland etc). Oh, and don't get me started on the Ubuntu Python installation :/