Sounds like you should try Linux Mint Debian Edition. I've been using it since I gave up on Ubuntu 11.04

The thing about that is, once you've solved that problem, you don't really have to solve it again. In fact, I had hardware issues with my new laptop with Ubuntu, which seemed to be making false assumptions (it's just a new Thinkpad!), that I didn't have on Debian. And it took me very little time to set up ndiswrapper on Debian and find the wireless driver for my wifi card. However, I can see the need for better hardware detection on a more exotic portable device. On a desktop, none of this is an issue at all -- I happily ran a Zenwalk development environment for quite some time a few years ago when I was working at one startup.