I'd say that Debian is just as easy to configure nowadays due to Ubuntu's bloat. And It's maybe easier if you want to customize things.

I'm using KDE since Ubuntu 11.10 dropped Gnome Classic (which was really much more stable than both Unity and KDE). I Turned off nepomuk and now it is driving me crazy with notifications that appear even after turning them off. Even then, it's the best I could find in this distro.

The same can be said about US people... They think US way is the only way to go. The same can be said about US government's control of information (I think it's even better, though)