if you are ok with an Ubuntu base (which these days is drifting further from its Debian base) then regular mint is great.
if forced…
- Debian stable (or sid if you loathe/love yourself)
- lmde
- mint
- something other than ubuntu
- …
- ubuntu
not hating on ubuntu, its just been moving away from where I am at.
this thread is it in a nut shell. the x11/wayland situation can trip things when it really should be super seamless. that will be fixed soon enough.