I distro hopped for a bit before finally settling in Debian (because Debian was always mentioned as a distro good for servers, or stable machines that are ok with outdated software)
And while I get that Debian does have software that isn’t as up to date, I’ve never felt that the software was that outdated. Before landing on Debian, I always ran into small hiccups that caused me issues as a new Linux user - but when I finally switched over to Debian, everything just worked! Especially now with Debian 13.
So my question is: why does Debian always get dismissed as inferior for everyday drivers, and instead mint, Ubuntu, or even Zorin get recommended? Is there something I am missing, or does it really just come down to people not wanting software that isn’t “cutting edge” release?
From my experience as someone who uses Ultramarine Linux currently: The download page is fine, but not great as a new user. That alone kind of pushed me away, since I wasn’t sure if I was downloading the right ISO. I can definitely tell the packages are outdated. I like GNOME desktop (which is what I downloaded), but I definitely know that other distros make customizations to GNOME that I had begun to take for granted (e.g. pre-installed taskbar via GNOME extensions). I could definitely use Debian but I find it just… a bit behind? Like it definitely works, but other distros are slightly more user friendly. Debian can be customized to match those other distros, especially with Flatpak, but any distro that isn’t user friendly out of the box I don’t want to recommend.