Oolite Bulletins

I'm temporarily without a working pc after blowing my desktop mains transformer earlier this week due to a schoolboy error reconnecting my rig after a move
Once I get my rig up and running (assuming that the mtx has saved the rest of my desktop from being fried). I am going to look at changing my distro as I have been using Manjaro for quite some time and found that it is not as responsive as it once was but also as I've become forlorn at having to rely on the AUR (Arch User Repository) for things like printer and scanner drivers, inevitably other AUR components sneak their way in from time to time which has left me somewhat disappointed.
So I'm looking for a distro which is light on resources, stable and either has brother printer / scanner drivers in the official repository or can be obtained directly from the manufacturer , rather than using unofficial packages cobbled together by users as is the case with AUR.

To this end I started at first looking at Fedora XFCE, as drivers are available from Brother website, I am also drawn as Fedora is part of the RHEL development stream, the fact that Linus Torvalds also uses Fedora lends it a certain appeal.
I must confess that in the last few weeks I have being looking more and more at a distro which I had never considered due to a bad experience with a Linux Mint offshoot of this distro.

The distro in question is Debian (again I would be using the XFCE desktop as I find it an excellent balance between performance, functionality & appearance).
I had a nightmare using mint Debian edition (this was years back and I understand that mint at the time gave it very minimal attention).
I hear from lots of people that Debian is ultra stable, reliable and secure due to the free software only ethos. I also hear that it is very lean on resources (good news for me as my desktop is several years old).
I also like the idea that Debian doesn't use the latest software versions and only incorporates software into it's repository when it is completely satisfied that it is stable (would I be right in saying that critical security updates are still applied even though software versions remain a version behind).
On the face of it Debian sounds just like what I want, it's one of the oldest distros and has spawned many offshoots.
If anyone can offer any advice or user experience concerning Debian or Fedora it would be very greatly appreciated.
I've tried using the live images of both but they both seem quite bare and in my past experience you only begin to get an accurate impression of what a distro is like once you install it.

All help and advice greatly appreciated.
May look at getting a UPS to prevent power fumbles in future.

Before Unity I found Ubuntu to be working just fine.

Nowadays I am not really stuck with a certain distro but more at how it installs ( or not ) with my current hardware.

So usually I install some of them virtual to try them out and see if what I need is easy available or is easy to change.
Next I do an small HD install to get familiair to its 'surroundings' ( managers system control ) if it works fine it stays, if not delete...

Debian is good IF all drivers you need are available and you dont need the latest software versions of your 'desired' programs.

Have used mint, ubuntu, debian and slackware, usually with gnome or mate desktops

Thanks for sharing your experience cbr.
I may even give lxqt desktop a whirl - looks fairly nice and with minimal resource usage. I've read somewhere that XFCE has similar resource usage to mate and gnome once it starts using gnome dependencies.
The other question is whether using non-free drivers would bring any benefit? I've always previously kept to free software and drivers.
Need to get a working desktop machine before I do anything (the delays and hold ups that covid creates seems limitless).
Really missing oolite.

*Edit
Just seen the notification that 1.90 was released on the 30th and now I want to

I find the biggest resource hoarder to be browsers with audio and video codecs/plugins...