I just use Linux Mint Debian Edition for my study laptop, sounds pretty much the same - in over a year of use, I have literally never had a single problem with it (other than things directly caused by me like leftover fstab entries for testing). I know it's what Debian is renowned for but god damn that is a stable operating system.
You would be genuenly suprised how good of a desktop OS it is, granted the packaged are old but keep in mind you can use repo packages for stability and flatpak for up to date software
I'm sure it's perfecly fine as a desktop OS. It's just not for me. I prefer more up to date software, so I recommend Mint to anyone asking, but use Endeavour (Arch, BTW) myself. I finally understand why people are always singing the praises of the AUR.
Also, if I'm going to lean into Flatpak as a packaging system, I'm gonna use it as an excuse to properly try an immutable system and see how I get along with it.
Now, all of this is purely my own opinion. Other people can use and like what suits them. I'm not trying to gatekeep or be an elitist. I'm an absolute noob myself.
I currently have Pop_OS on a laptop, but haven't run Ubuntu in a while. What is worse about it?
So far (installed the other night) I just hate how slow the Pop Store runs. Terminal is quick and fluid, Firefox was good, Jellyfin setup all seemed to go quick. Installing the client for my VPN (PIA) went on forever and had issues so I just installed OpenVPN and set up a single Spain VPN gateway there. But for whatever reason that store just drags ass
The Pop Shop is definitely one of the worst things about the distro, Cosmic Shop runs smooth as butter by comparison. Looking forward to the Cosmic Beta currently due in a few months