So if you want to install VSCode, Telegram, Skype, Stremio, Sublime Text, Python 3.6, clipgrab, steam, dukto, tilix, etc. You know that half of them won't work out of the box on debian stable. Each year it will be different ones, to make it spicier, for different reasons that can take a huge amount of time and energy to figure it, if you ever do.
Then if you need to do anything exotic, and it's worse. E.G: I'm currently compiling a lot of crypto currency wallets (I run a master node automation service). Most of them will compile only on Ubuntu. And if you don't want precisely Ubuntu 12.04 (I compile for 16.04), you'll need a little tweak.
Don't mistake that for hatred. I donate to the debian project financially, I adore them.
But for the desktop, it's really not making my life easy.
To be fair, I'd expect any OS to run nicely on that spec.
W10 does a fair few things wrong, but performance is not really one of them, unless you're on a Pentium 4 or something.
Windows seem to require many many CPU cycles just to update itself and index files (yet cortana never seems to find anything, but that's another discussion).
Edit: I found the "offending phrase", I think. I dare you to click the link, it leads to a (free) online book. :D
Desktop usage (terminals, browsers, editors, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, media listening/viewing and light creation) should not be surprising. It should not change out from underneath the user.
I've run Debian Stable for more than 15 years as my primary desktop system, almost always with XFCE. I add the Google Chrome repository and download the latest Firefox and Firefox Nightly. That's it. The whole thing runs really nicely on an i5-2500 with 16GB RAM and 2 SSDs in a ZFS mirror. I'll need new hardware when I switch from 2 1920x1200 monitors to a big 4K screen; I won't need to change my OS.