This might be unpopular among the people attracted to this question, but my recommendation is to pick one that is easy and popular.
It's really easy to slowly get dragged into maintenance and customization work. It's a real risk. We're all programmers, we like computers to work well perfectly, and we'll be damned if we let some glitch exist.
But you know what's even better than configuring libraries to be adapted to your needs? Saving a whole day.
In my humble opinion, the distributions are similar enough that most let you do your scripting, customization and automation needs very well. So instead of focussing on small differences, choose one with few glitches, quick updates, and a GUI. And big enought that if your bluetooth driver has a problem, someone has already posted the solution somewhere.
That's just my personal experience, it all depends on how personalized you like your OS. I spent a lot of time installing and tweaking stuff, but looking back, it wasn't nearly as fun as writing applications.
Sebastian