yeah, that is fair.

But it does mean those distributions do have a purpose, but which you deemed to have little value. That was my point.

The point of a beginner friendly distro is that I don't have to maintain their systems. Both my partner and my parents are running Ubuntu and I never have to touch them. They are due for an upgrade so will be going to LMDE as I tested that for a few months recently and far prefer it to Ubuntu - and I may even be a bit anti-Ubuntu these days, hence preferring the Debian base.

But yeah, it picked up printers fine, samba shares etc. It "just worked".

I do not want to have to keep an eye on their machine.