By being a 'base' only it is missing one of the projects goals as a universal operating system. Accessibility is a goal to that end of 'universal' too. The noob experience of Debian is frankly awful, and after about 20 years of mucking around with various Linux flavours I would not recommend it to those fleeing Windows.
It's better today than some earlier releases that unceremoniously dumped a new user at the terminal with no clue what to do next... But far from the polished experience found elsewhere. In short, it has its uses, but is not universal. I'd say dont buy hardware that relies on non-free components, but in laptop land that's often difficult.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
