I use Debian 9 with gnome. I don't know what I'm missing by not using one of these other distributions and don't care enough to seek out that information because I have thus far managed to do everything I need with Debian, and have used it for years.
I have been a Debian user forever, but my current go-to for "recommending Linux to friends" is Ubuntu Studio.
Latest release pretty much rocks, everything works smoothly out of the box, and the system is set up and ready for multimedia audio/video/etc. content creation.
It still quite Debian underneath, but there is a lot to be said for having a multimedia workstation ready to go, out of the box, on the other end of the spectrum ..
Yeah, it's nice to experience a low-friction setup that does great many things. I used Ubuntu for a little while but kept breaking it. I'm a bull in an operating system china shop.
Damn. Maybe I need to look around.