Your mention of Mepis revived old memories, having tried it years ago. I considered having another look. Imagine my surprise to find the files on their website have not been updated since January 2012. Mepis may be convenient for file sharing, but it could not be up to date for Internet security. Certainly the included browsers would be outdated.
I tried Mepis and some others before settling on Ubuntu and later Mint. Mepis was not too user friendly when it came to setting up and using printers. With the print drivers manually installed, Mepis went through the motions of printing, but nothing ever printed out. I am very persistent, but finally gave up. By comparison, Ubuntu Hardy Heron was literally plug and play - I plugged in a printer, Ubuntu automatically detected it and installed the correct driver. Best of all, it printed. I was sold on Ubuntu from that time on and still use it.
Yes, Mepis is three years old. How old is Win7? Win8? I just keep the Security repos for Debian updated and no problems.
As for updated browsers, Opera is not included in the Debian repos so I just go to Opera.com and download the latest .deb version to install later. Same with any other program I like.
As far as printers, I would go to the mfgr website and download the .deb drivers for whichever model I needed. I had problems with one newer Brother printer, but I could either save the file (usuall either a schematic or text file) to a format that the Gimp recognized and print it out that way, or I would logout and reboot in ‘doze and print it out that way.
For the few times I have needed to print anything that was all that was necessary. Plus there were other linux progs that would print the file(s) sometimes when the default print would not work.
Sometimes I look up an Ubuntu Canonical repo to download something I want to try that is not in the regular Debian repos, it all depends on what I am after at the time.
Plus, let’s not forget the Alien option as well.