You cannot and should not expect these users to know about any obscure text files, let alone read and understand the tech babble that's in them.

Debian NEWS files are nothing like full changelog. They only document major changes that happen when upgrading from a Debian stable release to the next one.

The users do not have to hunt for this information, the content of the NEWS files is shown automatically during the upgrade.

Since these are targeting end users, they usually do not include "tech babble".

The only alternative to NEWS files that I can think of would be to never change anything from one Debian stable release to the next. Of course if Debian were to do that they would quickly lose all relevance as an operating system.

CC: @juliank@mastodon.social @stardust@fosstodon.org