5 years ago I would default to Mint because of how pain free the installation and setup process was. It would magically fix all the sound/sleep/firmware etc. issues other distros had.

Now Debian has caught up to it IMHO. Yes, you still have to add some non-free repos or firmware packages but it’s really easy and after that it’s mostly smooth sailing. The stability and simplicity of Debian is hard to beat. I’ve spent years on testing version and never had a single issue with an upgrade. It’s rock solid.