EvilZone

A good read is always 'Just for Fun', the 'biography' of Linux and/or Linus Torvalds, explaining the development of our all-time-favorite operating system. I really liked the way it's written, because it is almost as if he talks to you.

Another good read - even though it's not strictly computer related - is 'Fermat's last theorem' by Simon Singh which is about the proof of Fermat's conjecture. It is very well written and understandable even with only a little knowledge of number theory / math in general.

Looks nice on first view, even though it's probably not POSIX. Anyways, have you tried using it? How does it feel compared to bash, ksh etc? If you have some experience, you might consider posting to the Unix-Tools-Thread:
https://evilzone.org/operating-system/linuxbsd*nix-tool-thread/

If you are just like me and lurk the interwebs all the time, you probably know reddit, voat and hackernews and the likes. One fairly new network is https://lobste.rs/. It has some interesting links and articles. You can read without any registration, but that's needed if you want to contribute to discussions. Registrations only work by invitations, that's what keeps the community pretty small but on the other hand it ensures an overall high quality.
I highly recommend a visit.

https://lobste.rs/about

I want to hint on (almost) everything that suckless released. They are doing a good job by creating simple tools that are hackable and -as the name suggests- suck less. ST (http://st.suckless.org/) for example is a terminal written in c, that can be easily used and gives  some insights on how theses programs work.
Furthermore, 9menu and dmenu are great tools to use with only a window manager or if you are creating your own desktop environment. They are part of the suckless tool collection (http://tools.suckless.org/).
Last but not least, dwm is a simple and easy-to-use window manager that is dynamic (meaning it supports both, tiling and floating windows). (http://dwm.suckless.org/)

Their philosophy (http://suckless.org/philosophy) and their style guidlines (http://suckless.org/coding_style) are interesting as well.

If you are looking for music for concentration, try giving game music a try. I have been a big fan of it and it helps my to stay focused while programming. I really like the Skyrim soundtrack (even thought some of the songs have vocals) and stuff like pokemon. You might not regret giving it a try.

To be honest, I do not think it matters, with what distro you start out when using linux. Everything that matters is your own will to commitment, and if you want to start with arch / gentoo / crux or the similar 'more advanced distros' it is fine. But then, you need to accept the fact, that this will lead to a much steeper learning curve that you would have gotten with ubuntu or mint. I got the impression that a lot of people are much more unwilling to help you, if you ask basic questions in channels or forums of advanced linux distros, but that might be an unobjective opinion.