Ive been using ubuntu nearly 10 years as my primary os on every my servers and desktops, they really came a long way. We hated eachother bigtime, however if you decide to get on well with each other somethings may be unseen. However ubuntu is a great os and still my number one, and i love unity(really). Also the ubuntu comunity definitely rocks. You can find nearly everything's .deb packages, you'll have apt which is one of the main reason why i still use this os. It's dead simple. But if you really need low hardware and high performance i think you really take a look BSDs. However you need an os that runs well, is sufficient for doing internet tasks, can handle your scripting things, can do developping stuff, etc... go debian derivatives (ubuntu, mint,...)