There is also Mint Debian if you want Mint. But honestly, distro doesn't matter at all to most users. Pick any desktop environment that looks nice to you and go for it.

To be fair, Mint does a good job of fixing the annoyances that Ubuntu introduces. It comes with Snap disabled by default, for example.

True; however, Debian's update schedule is its blessing AND a curse, and old packets may result in lacking features (which can be frustrating) and lackluster performance in certain applications. And while you can use Flatpaks for some of it, system tools are not installed this way, and sandboxing brings its own set of issues.

That's not to say Debian is bad on desktop - Debian 12 is great and it runs on my laptop and I couldn't be happier - but the limitations are there.

Also, as far as I'm aware, Mint does modify Ubuntu to exclude some of Canonical's "features"

Anyway, if you want a sleek up-to-date system that is completely independent of Ubuntu, Manjaro remains a solid pick. Rolling release means you'll get the latest and greatest, and packet retention means you don't have to dip into unstable territory that is the domain of pure Arch.