> I run Debian stable, and it's not immutable, but it is very unchanging. I don't worry much about system libraries and tooling.

I basically did the same with Tumbleweed for a couple of years. Can't stand the point release distros. Lagging behind a year or two when it comes to the DE is not something I fancy. Never liked Tumbleweed much though. Felt very unpolished when using Plasma.

> The blind spot then is CLI apps and tooling.

I can really recommend homebrew. Works well. apt is for the system, homebrew is for user facing CLI apps. :)

I did the same. I have a debian stable. Everything else besides build-essential, firefox and gnome is either docker, homebrew or flatpak