As someone relatively new to using Linux, I am increasingly confused as to why so many people use Ubuntu or consider Debian based systems the most beginner friendly. Maybe it was true 10 or 15 years ago when I last tried Linux (I enjoyed trying out Linux Mint around then), but my experience the past 9 months has been quite the opposite!

you are right, of course. In my case its maybe a stick to what works, and not willing to spend a lot of time on tweaking and learning.

But given all these frictions I should probably reserve some time do select a different Linux flavor and migrate to that.

It can depend a lot on what software you use. There are some like MX, Peppermint and Mint that work well and have a nice desktop experience, but personally I've found Debian repositories to be far too limited in what they offer. It is not really beginner friendly if you have to go hunting around on the internet and adding custom repositories just to install your favourite web browser. I much prefer being able to easily install everything I want with the default system setup 🙂

for sure. Thank you. I'll have take this in consideration if I decide to make the switch.

My favourite by far is TROMjaro which recently got a big update. It is the only one I know of that ticks all the boxes of being run by lovely people motivated by a solid philosophical basis, being very beginner friendly, having beautiful and consistent theming, being easily customisable to your own layout and styling preferences, and having full software availability built in:
https://www.tromjaro.com/