Ask HN: What is the best debian like linux distro?

I want to move my laptop from Windows Vista to a Linux distro (like Debian for ease of apt-get like installation management). I am a developer and my wife is a Facebook user (with lot of friends and a bunch of Zynga games that she plays). We rely on the laptop solely for our purpose. So here are the needs and wants:

1. Easy to use for a non programmer. Who does not know anything related to software. 2. A programmer paradise, should have ease of setup: Java, Ruby and Python. Apache web server and Tomcat eclipse etc. Version control like svn and git.(Please bare with me if I have mentioned some trivial things here)

3. Last but not the least easy to install and maintain.

So which Linux distro should I go with?

Thanks for your input in advance.