On Debian I actually get a surprising amount of packages from just the official repo. In Python or R, I could almost do a full analysis just with those packages. The smaller number of separately installed packages, I can at least do a superficial sanity check. An alternative model of doing things exists. Considering how infinitesimally small Debian is compared to Windows and MacOS, if we had more users, momentum, and volunteers, I have no doubt that I could do everything with well-tested packages only.