The point of the quote isn't that Debian is hard. It's that people chose a worse distro because they need hand holding.

Consider a comparable quote:

> Taskrabbit is an ancient Swedish word meaning "I can't assemble IKEA furniture".

I remember my first time trying to install Debian, being a total noob to the whole thing. I thought parts of the installer were broken, because I couldn't toggle TUI checkboxes. Every time I tried, the installer would instead jump to the next screen.

Years later, I figured out that you're supposed to use the spacebar to select/toggle UI elements, not the Enter key. Nobody told me that, and the text-mode installer certainly doesn't tell you!

Ubuntu 11.04, on the other hand, was no trouble to install.

The Debian install wizard is quite long and technical. I can see how Ubuntu (no more than a handful of questions) appeals.