The current stable Debian (11) is two years old. Of course it has older packages than distros released more recently. Debian 12 is newer than 22.04 right now,

The current stable Debian (11) is two years old. Of course it has older packages than distros released more recently. Debian 12 is newer than 22.04 right now, and probably about the same as Ubuntu 23.04. It's in hard freeze, and soon to be released though. The Debian live DVDs are using the Calamares installer now, if that's more your style. Debian's normal installer is still the same as it always was. Debian is still more default, you set it up for yourself than Ubuntu. I don't like Ubuntu's defaults, but I know what you mean. GNOME's defaults are better now, if that helps out.