I’ve said this many times, and will continue saying this again and again:

When in doubt: Linux Mint will provide everything you’ll need. You can distrohop once you understand the basics, customizations and optimizations can come later.

TLDR: SerpentOS rebranded

When in doubt: Linux Mint.

You can find something more suitable for your need later on, but this should give you a baseline experience.

I would steer clear of labwc or other minimalist WMs when you’re just getting started. In fact, try nothing but the basics first.

Also a great way to confuse a command with a floppy disk drive.

My favorite distros are Gentoo and Debian.

I can say with confidence that Linux Mint is what you’re looking for.

Django and React??

Sounds a bit heavy for my taste, but all the best for the creators & maintainers!

How about FreeBSD? Or a more desktop friendly counterpart of GhostBSD?