What probably helps is that I'm running Debian "unstable", which provides more or less a continuous flow of updates instead of dropping a full release periodica

What probably helps is that I'm running Debian "unstable", which provides more or less a continuous flow of updates instead of dropping a full release periodically. I just apt-update/apt-upgrade every few weeks, usually resulting in tens or hundreds of packages getting updated. I had to resolve some minor issues with broken dependencies a handful of times, but for the rest it has been pretty much effortless.