Debian is a large, complex operating system, and a huge open source project. It’s thirty years old now. To many people, some of its aspects are weird. Most such things have a good reason, but it can be hard to find out what it is. This is an attempt to answer some such questions, without being a detailed history of the project.
Came here for this. I enjoy all three flavors of Mint, personally. XFCE is probably one of the best “lightweight” distros put there and rarely gets mentioned. Cinnamon is perfect for anyone looking for a more user-friendly Ubuntu derivative, and LMDE is probably the most approachable Debian distro out there.
Mint is a great starter distro for just about everybody.