Linux

I also think we could learn website design from… looks at notes …everyone else.

whacks you with a rolled up newspaper No! Bad. Wrong.

There is a beauty to simplicity that's lost on so many. I can load a Debian wiki page over a dial-up connection at the south pole. The design is uncluttered and uncomplicated. That goes for every page on debian.org

I often see Mint recommended to new users, but rarely Debian, which has a goal to be “the universal operating system”.

I always took "universal" to be in the sense of "universal remote": it's not universally adopted, it's universally applicable. The fact that it's the upstream of so many major distros (including Mint) indicates that it's accomplished that.

Making it "new user" friendly necessarily requires restrictions and choices made by the maintainers for the ease of the users, which negates the "unversality."

Alpine, by its use of musl over glibc doesn't support DNS over TLS because the musl creator believes its better for user experience. It is in theory but if the other end uses it, you are out of luck and will likely spend days troubleshooting why one bit of software refuses to connect.

I totally agree with your assessment about Mint and Debian.

I like Debian's minimal approach, but I think minimal can also be user-friendly.

I still has a nice installer, though.

The Debian website is trash and I'm glad to see it acknowledged. People always take criticism of the website as if folks are saying it looks ugly. No. The layout is just icky.