Among Ubuntu based distros, it's really quite simple - unless you have a compelling reason NOT to use Ubuntu, use Ubuntu. It will always be the one with the most support and firmest security updates.

But if you want something superior to Ubuntu, consider Debian instead. Unlike Ubuntu, its main repository is the largest, well, anywhere. It has a unique choice between stable, testing, and unstable. And it's also more fundamentally stable in the sense that it doesn't go down weird rabbit holes like Ubuntu has (Unity, upstart, Mir).

The big killer feature of Debian, IMHO, is the long term reduction of effort and headaches. Generally apt-get dist-upgrade will just plain work--even through pretty awesome changes under the hood, such as the transition to systemd. Smaller projects can't devote the sort of resources required to make that happen. Not with the vast software repository of Debian.

How customizable is Debian? Can I go above and beyond with it? Also, does it come with App stores like Ubuntu does? OMG! Why haven’t I thought of that! *smacks head*

Try Fedora first. It has notably more bells and whistles, Debian is rather conservative in some terms.

If it still fails for you:

Depends on your ability to write and modify code.

There is a number of apt-get GUIs with synaptic being the most famous one.

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What I mean by customizable is with the GUI, my mind is to young to code hardcore stuff like that. But Fedora, I guess I cupould give it a try.

Both Debian and Fedora support (roughly) the same desktops and window managers.

This is a good time to start.

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you weren't asking for help, you were asking for thoughts.

threads asking for "recommend best linux distro for my very special needs" are a dime a dozen.
have you searched before posting? i mean the forums.

nobody can recommend you the perfect distro, it's a choice you have to make yourself.
but it should be an informed choice.

strangely, no-one seems to be asking "where can i find information that would help me to make an informed distro choice"...

so, i am asking it now.

anybody?

i mean things like:
- differences between release models
- desktop environments
- old hardware support (after all that seems to be one of the main reasons to start usingh linux at all)
- software management
- stick to the gui until you learn to use the command line, lest you break things

???

1 members found this post helpful.

Actually all distros have some cons and pros, but it depends exactly on you (I mean what will you take as pro and/or cons).
Would be better to tell us what do you really need. Or even better to try. You can download and run a lot of distros without installing them - therefore you can check how do you like that.

If you just mean the UI - Debian offers a broader variety of well supported desktop environments and window managers than any other. While it does default to GNOME3, it maintains equally good support for other popular desktop environments such as KDE, XFCE4, and LXDE. Other distributions mainly support just one DE/WM.

One particularly good aspect to Debian is Debian's menu system which ensures that by default, applications will be accessible by the main menu of whichever DE/WM you choose. This greatly mitigates the long term maintenance effort you need to put in. But if you want to customize your own menu, you can optionally remove the Debian menu system entirely (typically, there is no need to do this, you can just add whatever customizations you want).

The main sort of customization the Debian uniquely offers is the ability to choose between Stable, Testing, and Unstable branches. Debian also includes mechanisms to help you mix and match software from different branches (look up "pinning"). This is particularly useful if you mostly like Debian Stable, but there's just this one software package where you really want to use the latest version (or just a more recent version).

Various other fancy customizations can be done however you please. Some things you have to be careful about apt updates overwriting (assuming you use apt for software updates - technically, you don't need to use it at all after the initial install--if you don't mind missing out on security patches). That's just to be expected.

For example, I have customized initrd scripts for my RAMBOOT and NFS-RAMBOOT hacks. I modify files which are normally not supposed to be touched, so these changes get overwritten in certain cases I look out for. But in any case, I have found Debian to be very flexible when it comes to some odd and esoteric code hacks.

What do you mean?

As noted, you can use a graphical GUI front end for apt, such as Synaptic or GNOME Software (the one included in GNOME3, used by both Debian and Ubuntu by default).

I would suggest LMDE.

This is essentially the Mint style interface, but built using native Debian packages instead of Ubuntu ones.
The Debian base makes it very stable.
The Cinnamon DE is very customisable.

Have you tried using a search engine to find some info; e.g. "elementary vs mint vs ubuntu"?