I’m just a little disgruntled because I like treating my Pi’s as headless servers, often with a single purpose, and I don’t want to have to erase the SD cards to upgrade versions.

sounds like a dietpi usecase! (sorry for the shilling, i just really like the project)

but hey, if debian works don’t touch it

I kinda understood half of the things you said, but i run DietPi on mine.

It has 64-bit support, you can update the os without resetting everything, still based on the original kernels for the closed source optimizations, but removes all the clunky and slow parts, leaving a very lightweight and fast os.

Plus, for newbies (like me) it has a decent built-in installer for various software with minimal ulterior setup required.

Cant spell spain without Pain