It's a really simple problem to avoid, and IMO has been for years. It's been at least 10 years since I've bought something without intel wifi so maybe I'm out of touch, but I'm kind of astounded there are so many upvotes to the meme.
My rule for a very long time has been: Get something with intel wifi, or even atheros wifi, and you will almost certainly not have a problem. Get broadcom wifi and your problem will directly relate to how much effort your distro has put into trying to make broadcom not be shit. Stay the fuck way from realtek and mediatek.
That's it. I literally can't recall a time since about 2010 when I had a wifi problem with Linux on any device I owned.
I keep two of these in my bag for instant wifi on any device I might happen to be working on that doesn't have it. Most recently popped one into an old desktop I picked up for my youngest son, and have used it previously as a workaround for someone who had a laptop where the onboard wifi worked but would not come back from sleep. (That was broadcom, IIRC)
I started using Plasma 5 a smidge before devs were saying it was ready for primetime. That was my conversion from Gnome (which I was very happy to leave by then) and it's been nothing but positive.
I will wait for the full release of Plasma 6, but I'm super excited for it. I still <3 Plasma 5.
Been a few years since I did a Debian install, but IMO it's fairly daunting for a noob unless it's changed a lot. I found Arch easier to install (this is not me suggesting you use Arch, just making a comparison - I currently don't use Arch btw.)
I would disagree with the prior poster urging you to use Debian testing/unstable partially because saying it like that as they did implies they are the same, which they are not.
Suggest if you stick with Debian (which is a fine and foundational distro, I'm just not sure it's a good choice for a noob - but again haven't touched vanilla debian in years), you read this page first (and the page for each of the branches) to decide which release to use. https://wiki.debian.org/DebianReleases