proprietary wifi drivers have been the cause of many regular support requests for me in relation to my guide for debian. for a long time, i’d wanted to keep debian set to the default foss configuration. but, wifi issues had me at times considering moving the base install to ubuntu, simply because it was easy. at one point, i’d experimented with a chapter to enable “contrib” and “non-free” in debian for 3rd party driver issues for those who needed it. but, that resulted in its own set of issues on initial install. instead, i decided to go with the “unofficial” netinst iso for debian, which includes many 3rd party drivers for wifi. in testing that with people, it’s only been a very small few that had a machine where the unofficial distro did not work.
there’s debate about which interface is more user friendly by default. but, if drivers are the issue, take a look at what is available at https://cdimage.debian.org/images/unofficial/non-free/images-including-firmware/current/. i’ve tested it on a multitude of machines that require proprietary wifi drivers an dit has been quite easy most of the time. for the times when wifi still failed, an ethernet cable still worked for the base install, and wifi could be sorted from there later. but, then it becomes a bit more custom.