I'd say get more used to Linux first. I tried LTS with very little prior Linux experience 10 years ago and failed miserably. Small documentation issues like a wrong version or an incomplete command line argument took me hours to find and fix.
Maybe using Arch or even Gentoo would be a sane next step.
Thanks, I'll try out Arch. Actually I dubbed into Arch many years without any Linux experience and failed before the 10th step. Now that I have more Linux experience maybe I'd fair better.
To get the full benefit of Arch you should try it the whole way: not just installing packages, or installing pacman to get stuff from AUR, but also making your own PKGBUILD to understand the different steps involved in getting a "foreign" source code to turn into a usable software in an automated, reproducible way.
Maybe using Arch or even Gentoo would be a sane next step.