If you care about having the very latest versions of all apps, tools, compilers, etc. go with a "rolling distro" such as Manjaro (easier to setup) or Arch Linux (more advanced to administer). If you prefer upgrade stability (and a huge community with a lot of help), go with a "checkpoint distro" such as Ubuntu LTS (Long Term Support). For a desktop environment, I found LXQt (Ubuntu + LXQt = the Lubuntu distro) to be both very fast and quite modern-looking at the same time (especially if you invest some time into customizing it), while KDE Plasma (Ubuntu + KDE = the Kubuntu distro) is probably the best looking Linux out of the box, but somewhat more resource hungry. (More info at: https://distrowatch.com)