[Yaiba]

I've had an MacBook Pro from 2012 for a while now. I'm planning on upgrading the hdd to a ssd and bumping it up to 16 gb ram.

I mainly use this computer for school work, light programming (such as python, javascript, html, php, and etc), light gaming like diablo 3 and some streaming.

Over the past years using multiple versions of OSX I feel like some of the UIs causes the computer to run slower (when opening or quitting programs) and it typically takes a while for the OS to bootup

I like  OSx but I want to try something different, thats alot more smoother and be able to make it my main OS to boot up to. I've tried ubuntu and gnome and liked there simplicity greatly, i also liked using kali but I'm not too sure it would be great as my main OS to boot up to.
The only reason why I even used MAC OSX is to use pro tools for audio recording but i have drifted a way from that and what really urges me to get a different OS on this build is mainly due to  booting up other OS's in VMs take forever  on my current system build.

So my main question is what OS do you recommend installing for my  needs/wants? and why?

Give windows a try and if you just want a OS for coding I suggest Linux.