No need, if Ubuntu works out of the box then Debian also works most of the time. I've never had to install drivers for ethernet or wifi. The installer is a bit less graphical, but it will connect in a few "clicks", even wifi works for the installer.

This was the one for me, was running Debian a few years ago, I was really happy with how everything worked.

But at work I noticed a lot of tools I needed where pretty old. Like an old version of maven or an old version of Firefox or npm.

You can probably work around it, but I just went back to Mint again.

For what you need a firewall on a desktop-client?

I think the real time requirement can be relaxed for self contained experiment packages. And given that the shuttle ran a healthy number of student experiments, it's pretty likely that X system has appeared.

I believe crew laptops for email and stuff are also running non real-time systems.

For the main systems, sure. But non critical systems can pretty much run nearly anything.