I quote @murali, Ubuntu should be the best choice, in development and also in production. Debian is also good, but Ubuntu is very similar and has a better balance between newer packages and stability.
Anyway, i think the best approach is to stay with your favorite operating system and software. I work on Windows 10 with phpstorm, atom, illustrator ecc.. and Vagrant to manage different virtual environment (mirrored with production for best consistency). With Windows this kind of things get a little complicated, but if you are a Mac guy they're a piece of cake.