Note that, Ubuntu had some rough times, and did some odd things (I distinctly remember changing gid of system groups, for example) - but it has gotten a lot bet

Note that, Ubuntu had some rough times, and did some odd things (I distinctly remember changing gid of system groups, for example) - but it has gotten a lot better. I don't think I can remember Debian ever having any serious issues on dist upgrade. Well, there was a bit of hairpulling with the change from lilo to grub - but I think that was because I tried it early, before grub became the new standard..). But of course, there are no perfect tradeoffs. I'm inclined to believe GNU guix (or nixos) might be the next best thing(tm) - but I've yet to put that to the test..