This has been my exact Debian experience since I tried it on Debian 3.1. On every system at least one of network, sound, display, or power management just wouldn't work out of the box even if they did in the installer.

I ended up on Mint because I consistently found that Debian was willing to compromise their philosophy for the live distro installer, but they would never warn you that you were about to reboot into an air gapped system.