Proprietary packagings

You may have a point. Since my laptop runs Ubuntu, it's simple for me to check what's available through the package manager, and I assume people understand that this means likely availability in other Debian-derived distros as well. Although I use Debian on servers, I haven't tried to run it on a laptop, thinking, perhaps erroneously, that Ubuntu brings some conveniences. On the other hand, I either run no desktop or Xubuntu.