I switched from OS X to Linux a few months back, and I'm never going back. I thought like you did originally, that I needed something "standard" like Ubuntu, but found Ubuntu does too many things and installs too many things. Instead I'm now using Arch Linux and i3 Window Manager. It's a long stretch from the beautiful Mac UI that I used for the past 15 years, but as a programmer I can't stress enough how awesome it is not to move my hands off the keyboard for 95% of the operations I do. Almost no mousing required at all. It got even better when I hacked in a few Gnome bits (gnome-session & gnome-keyring) so I could have a more comfortable experience. Nothing will replace the well-written apps you expect on your Mac, but generally if you can live with working-but-uglier apps on Linux you'll be fine. And given that unless you specifically develop apps for Macs, you're probably deploying on Linux anyway, you'll enjoy developing closer to the production metal.