10 or 20 years ago, Debian and GNOME 1.4 or 2 worked perfectly for me... on my single-CPU, single-screen computer that was always connected to the same network.
Nowadays, I expect my multi-core laptop to switch networks automatically when I move from home to work and vice-versa, to have a seamless multi-screen display when I connect it to external monitors, to switch the audio input and output automatically when I plug in my headset with microphone or connect to a monitor with built-in loudspeakers, and to run multiple virtual machines or containers easily.
I still use Debian today (as well as Ubuntu, SuSE and CentOS, as a main OS or in various VMs). I am not so happy with some of the choices made in GNOME 3 and I understand some of the frustration around systemd, but I also admit that many things that were a pain to configure 10 years ago are now working out of the box in most cases.
FWIW, I have been using Linux since 1992 when SLS was distributed on 12 floppy disks and only had a half-working TCP/IP stack. I recycled those floppies in the meantime but I still have my CD-ROM "Ygddrasil Linux/GNU/X Fall 1993". Sometimes I look back at these old systems with a bit of nostalgia, but I also know that I am more productive today with a modern version of Linux.