Use the distribution of your choice, but with the most recent mainline kernel. The releases are already gated by the LKML process, so don't worry about actual, non-pre kernel releases being too unstable for any normal desktop/workstation usage.
If you don't lack the skills, and are ok with the system telling you when you need to spend some time on transitioning configurations/library versions, consider using Arch Linux. It will demand manual configuration to some extend, but that's mostly just enabling (and rebooting/manually-starting) systemd units for things like a GUI login manager. The benefit is, that you don't rely on backports for bug fixes, allowing things like youtube-dl (interacting with uncooperative websites by ~scraping) to work from the official repositories.
If you don't lack the skills, and are ok with the system telling you when you need to spend some time on transitioning configurations/library versions, consider using Arch Linux. It will demand manual configuration to some extend, but that's mostly just enabling (and rebooting/manually-starting) systemd units for things like a GUI login manager. The benefit is, that you don't rely on backports for bug fixes, allowing things like youtube-dl (interacting with uncooperative websites by ~scraping) to work from the official repositories.