Honestly, in the age of Flatpak and containerization (as well as Debian often being well-supported by upstream projects for script or package-based install), I feel like the age of Debian packages isn’t that annoying anymore; anything important gets security patches, and it’s easier than ever to use 3rd party software without breaking your system.

i was pleasantly surprised in 2023 to learn that debian was still king in the server space and precisely because of this -- i remember doubting trying debian on my personal hardware because of the age of the packages back around 2004.