Is there any reason to run Debian as a user, as opposed to a sysadmin? I love running Debian on my servers, it's boring and rock-solid, but why should I run it on my PC instead of a derivative distro?
In my case, by using XFCE.
I guess if you like Gnome that doesn't really apply, since that isn't availible easily on Mint, but Gnome is one of the reasons I didn't want Ubuntu.
Saying that Debian is "not Ubuntu to begin with" is of course technically true, but the similarities are so large that I have a hard time seeing anyone would have much of an issue switching, Ubuntu is and always has been based on Debian.
On servers, my experience is that Ubuntu is, while not "better", far more common, simply because of the fact that they have a more clear and understandable paid support plan, which I guess makes sense. Not that most users bother to pay for it anyway, but at least it's there if you end up with an EOL system you can't decom.
Boring and rock-solid is also how I like my desktop.
In the stable distribution, packages tend to be a little dated obviously, but at least it is _stable_. And you can go with the _testing_ distribution for more up-to-date packages.
Also, as a sysadmin, I like having it on my computer to develop and test scripts without having to SSH in a dedicated environment (I still have to eventually but only for the final tests).
Not saying one is better than the other, just remarking that it's interesting to see 'getting in the way' meaning completely opposite things for different people :).
But now my schedule only lets me do an update once a month rather than daily, so it feels more likely to introduce breaking changes and I'd rather just leave her all until a specific moment when I have the time to work through it all, and the longer term support distris help with that because those big all-at-once upgrades seem to be better documented.
Different strokes and all that
Debian comes with backports repositories which allow you to cleanly install newer versions of selected packages, without affecting the rest of the system.
Not really sure I'd swap Fedora's _really good_ driver support for it, but since I'm running Silverblue and most of my "civilian" apps are flatpaks I probably wouldn't notice the difference.
The only real reason to use Debian is that you think what Debian is trying to do is a good thing. They have a very clear definition of what they consider acceptable software engineering practices, how they think things shoud work, what's acceptable from free software and they do a lot of work to ensure what they ship fit that. They value portability to an extreme, have strong opinions about how linking should be done, separations of concern and what can be considered free software. It's an extremely political distribution with a lot of patching happening to try to shoe horn things into their vision.
I personally think it's extremely misguided, breaks a lot of good sotfware, mostly unsafe, a significant drag on the people actually developping what they ship, and basically the embodyment of everything that is wrong with Linux distribution as a concept. Others will tell you they are fighting the good fight for their users freedom and the guardian of the kingdom.
How you stand on this will determine if Debian - and its derivatives which bring its flaws with the Debian inheritance - makes sense for you.
I ran away from Ubuntu to Debian and am very happy: it's still the same system, just without the things that were becoming annoying (eg snaps).
- To get more recent versions of software
I drive a car. For almost anything besides wiper water, gas and oil in terms of maintenance, I go to a mechanic. OK, yes, in theory I know how to change tires, and I even have the tools to do it myself, but I let a workshop do it for me, purely out of convenience. I couldn't care less about the guts of the car; the only thing I care about is how often it annoys me and basically requires me to bring it to a mechanic. Is the motor "not targeted at me"?
This is how most people I know see and use their computers/tablets/phones.