Check out Xubuntu. Part of future proofing is adopting a UI that never and I mean never changes. It’s beautiful.
Re: Linux phobia - most developer activity just needs terminal, browser and maybe VsCode. Xubuntu gives everything you need.
Side benefit: you can easily run the Linux desktop as virtual machine. VNC remote desktop works great (checkout the Remmina client). Boot, configure, load packages, experiment. If things go wrong, destroy the VM and restart.
Also: To debug Linux configuration, ChatGPT and similar LLMs are really good. For developers, this is the golden age of the Linux desktop.
