I didn't find Mint with XFCE on my netbook any different in day-to-day usage than Debian. I certainly didn't think they were doing any more "thinking" for me than any other distro.

I gave Mint a try on my netbook a short while ago, it was nice, but, I'm back to running Debian Wheezy.

32 posts not one welcomes the poster of the question on his or her first post, shame on you all that posted with such bias.
I apologize italovignoli on behalf of the better mannered folk for the bad manners of some on this forum.
italovignoli you asked a reasonable question!
Please some one answer it without being rude, or arrogant.
Trev
And if you felt you did try to answer kindly then I apologize to you to.

The question was answered in the first reply.
Debian is extremely user friendly and well documented.
It is missing non-free CODECs and other software for legal and philosophical reasons which are, again, in the Debian documentation and on the website.

Wow, you're telling us to answer it and not be rude or arrogant yet you did not answer it and were rude and arrogant. BTW the OP has been a member for 5 years.

I don't find many OS's different on a day to day basis. I turn my machines on I work and then I turn them off every day. However, some days I need to do things like Updates and Mint (LMDE comes to mind here) can be quite different with its package ratings from 1-5 1 being safe while 5 being Mint doesn't want you touching 5 or even 4 for that matter because they may break your system but yet they are in official repos. Then we have update packs which are designed, again, to stop you from breaking your system. Anyway this is just my opnion as your posts are just yours so lets not get into a deep philosophical debate about it.

And during those 5 years has not asked for help with any Debian-related problems/questions.

I'd forgotten about the updates, so I think your original post stands after all.

Also, when I ran Mint I used Synaptic instead of all that. And for Synaptic, Mint had removed the "Mark All Upgrades" button -- to "protect" users from messing up their systems or whatever. I considered that to be too much hand-holding as I've never seen that in any other distro that has Synaptic.

exactly

The question was in effect - "why can't Debian be LMDE?". The answer is simple - it's not, most Debian users don't want it to be and that's why there are derivative distros like 'buntu, mint, lmde, aptosid, mepis, etc, etc...

Personally I don't want a distro that comes pre-configured with someone else's customisations. I want the basics and to be able to build on that, not to spend hours removing someone else's personalised "user experience" and proprietary crap...

Personally I moved to Debian on my desktop machine partly because a couple of things Ubuntu did to "help me" made things more difficult and I found Debian was easier to work with.
I moved to Debian on my netbook when I realised it was straightforward to install and I didn't need Mint's help to install wireless drivers and some CODECs from the deb-multimedia and non-free repositories. As I mentioned in a previous reply all the help you need with Debian is in the documentation on the website and it really is as easy to install and use as Mint or Ubuntu if you can read and follow instructions.

The question was also answered with details concerning the differences between the two systems in at least two posts. In addition, a few other posts were intended to elucidate the OP about the concept of user friendliness, which is highly relevant in the case of the OP's question.

I shall not bother to go into detail about a few of the "rude" and/or "arrogant" respondents being some of the most knowledgeable and helpful members of the board. (Not me of course, but we know who they are.)

Back in 1999 when I was on Slackware, I discovered that I didn't have to go looking for dependencies when installing new software on Debian, so I switched. I don't even have to compile any programs anymore. Now that's what I call user friendly!!!

Agreed. I think much of that is outdated information from the ancient times before the GUI installer.

I started using Debian as of the release of Squeeze, and I was surprised by how easy it was. Now my mother-in-law is using it (because they constantly break Windows somehow). The installer is pretty much about clicking "Next" on every screen, and when you do need to give some information, everything is clearly explained with no prior knowledge required.

OK, partitioning does require some knowledge, but you can always accept the default and use the whole disk.

Once installed, you essentially only have to know how to type in "apt-get install <package>" in the console to get all the software you want... unless you got Ubuntu's Software Center (which I believe is included in the default install with GNOME 2), in which case you just have to look at screenshots and press a button.

The only way it could be more "user friendly" is if they implemented that stupid paperclip from MS Office and had it pop up when you start GNOME.

Debian is a distribution that I tell beginners to use. The only complaint I've ever heard is that YouTube (or Facebook, in pages that embed YouTube videos) doesn't always work, but that's an issue with the Flash player and / or web browser.

When I tried Slackware, I expected it to be like Debian. Needless to say I realized just how easy Debian is. I've tried Ubuntu too and I don't think it's easier than Debian. I haven't tried Linux Mint though... does it have the paperclip?