Exactly. I'm not exactly a power user, but once I heard about Ubuntu being based on Debian, and the whole Linux being modular thing, along with learning how decoupled 'Linux' is from the GUI I quite literally made the switch to Debian cold-turkey. It doesn't have things I don't want, and Debian stable is relatively stable(understatement I know). For other purposes, I boot into Windows.
Last time I used Debian on an older Dell Inspiron, the wifi wasn't working and making it work meant I had to recompile the kernel. I also tried a Wifi stick and the same thing happened. The drivers weren't open-source and so I was out of luck on both Debian and OpenSuse.
Out of frustration I installed Ubuntu and in Ubuntu my Wifi just worked out of the box. And that's when I switched.
Of course, Ubuntu does make mistakes. Nouveau for instance is better for my old laptop's Geforce and yet Ubuntu still asks me to install the proprietary Nvidia drivers, drivers which have brought me nothing but frustration. But regardless, Ubuntu does have the best hardware support.
If you think that way, then you're reasoning about it wrong. Replace the words "doesn't need" with "probably won't need" and then you're asking the right question.
Less is more. If everything he needs is available in Debian and he doesn't need the extra stuff provided by Ubuntu, then the default choice should be to use Debian.