I second Mint with XFCE. I have been using it for a decade and since I'm family tech support guy I installed it on all the PCs I have to support including some used for watching TV and YouTube high end Thinkpads, cheap Laptops used for school. It stays out of my way and just works. Of course there are issues here and there, but it was most solid distro for me. The ease of upgrade is stunning, dealing with Ubuntu servers an upgrade is almost always a new install and data migration, with Mint upgrading feels easy and fun.

What you said probably makes sense within the paradigm of Kremlin's propaganda. But in the real world it's just a pile of word garbage.