The Mint maintainers have Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE), which is based on Debian and pretty similar in functionality to the Ubuntu version though you do mis

The Mint maintainers have Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE), which is based on Debian and pretty similar in functionality to the Ubuntu version though you do miss some nice features (for example I don't believe the driver manager is present in this version). They seem to be hedging their bets for if they ever need to jump ship away from Ubuntu.