I am migrating my workflow to ubuntu from windows. I have a macbook pro at home and I really enjoy being able to use the workspaces feature on ubuntu to increase my productivity. As myself being someone that isn't very familiar with doing command line things and hasn't worked with linux a whole lot other than doing basic commands like cd, ls, rm, screen, and sudo. I was wondering what you think would be the best choice for a ubuntu version. I am looking for ease of use as well as stability. I spend most of my time working with eclipse, as well as writing documents.

On a side note, right now I have a pretty high end workstation, but I am using a crappy notebook 2.5 inch 1TB hard drive for my system. Would it be worth it to switch to a top of the line SSD, or would the difference not really be noticeable? How difficult would it be for a newcommer to setup the system with the os and important folders running on a SSD and then other folders for storage running on a HD.