Yep, Debian was (is) a disaster to configure graphics with modern hardware. It was pure open source (even blocked firefox as the logo was copyright protected). They opened up with a non-free repo for hardware support, but already lost the ‘market share’ on the desktop to Ubuntu (and the load of forks with just a different windoemanager as default… instead of adding a desktop selection on install). Also Ubuntu is offered a lot as option on new hardware.
With snap I’m guessing users migrate back… (a very few at least)