I keep my files in a repo on gitlab and use yadm to sync them.

Yadm is a wrapper around git, so you have all the standard git commands plus some extra to work with templating and encryption etc.

If you don’t want something completely different, PopOS is a great, snap free, distribution based on Ubuntu. It’s what Ubuntu should have been.

If you like the command line but want something more user friendly than curl, I suggest httpie.