I never said it can't work, but try using MX for a bit and tell me it doesn't make Debian much better as a workstation. MX tools are enough of a reason for me to always pick it over Debian in that scenario.

There's a reason it's such a well used distro, and it's not just because it's good for servers.

What are some workstation specific reasons it's well used?

I'm pretty sure stuff like function keys are just DE defaults. I've installed default gnome and they worked.

The main reason people use Debian, no matter what they use it for, is stability. While it's great that nothing ever breaks, you're also receiving nonessential updates every ~2 years.

That's not an issue on a server that's running mysql released 7 years ago, but you probably need to use flatpak and guix to keep specific tools relatively up to date. You're less likely going to need those tools when using a workstation focused distro like Fedora, that's released on a fixed 6 month cycle.

On top of that, workstation focused distros also integrate flatpak. Since synaptic only knows about apt, MX improves on it by only requiring you to enable flathub as a source to get a unified search/install/update.

Small stuff like that is important for a beginner that's asking for distro advice. They'll most likely want to click through a pretty gui, and Debian is lacking on that front because it's a server focused distro.