I honestly don't understand why there isn't more people talking about debian. Ubuntu is always mentioned, but it's going down hill, and debian is the obvious alternative. When I went from Ubuntu to debian, I got way more recent versions of my software. That used to be the only complaint people had with debian.
I wish debian would include ssh-import-id in the installer, its a minor change but big quality of life improvement that ubuntu has
Ubuntu is a frozen debian/sid. At least it was back in the day.
Whether Debian or Ubuntu LTS have newer versions of software really just depends on which was most recently released - they both have a 2 year release schedule but release on alternating years.