Am noob on debian, it’s great. Watched some videos to help introduce me, and it seems like the onboarding experience since 12 is way better than previously.
It’s the website that’s shitty, not the installer. And you’re not stupid OP, the bootable live image installer should be the default download. Make sure you link directly to it in your post, if you do. I should be able to go to the Debian website, hit download and get the best option like I can on the Ubuntu site. I got the normal installer instead, but that was fine for me.
I wouldn’t necessarily say I’m representative of the average newbie, as I had brief forays with using Linux many years ago. But it’s been painless. It took like an hour to setup, try a couple of DE’s, add Flatpack sources and then I was away, back to being immersed in my apps.
Wayland by default, inclusion of nonfree firmware sources, GNOME 43 are highlights for me and reasons why it deserves some focus. New users are coming from Windows, not Fedora. I’ve tried GNOME 2, that was a problem for me as a windows user. GNOME 43 is not a problem for Windows users, it is literally much more performant and stable. To the point I just realised now that it’s an older version when you pointed that out. Could’ve fooled me.
The reason I tried Debian first is because I wanted a blank slate, especially coming from Win11. That’s what I got after minimal and easy configuration. I’m satisfied with it and don’t feel curious about trying other distros, at least not right now.