> ... the Fedoras and Ubuntus were eating so much of my RAM I had to take refuge in Alpine ...

The name of the bloat you're looking for is called "systemd".

Even though it's still kinda, sorta, possible to keep a lean Debian install in check (and Debian by default uses systemd), systemd is quite the gigantic kitchen sink. In the Fedoras and Ubuntus it's indeed out of control now.

The one thing that speeds up a systemd Linux booting (and usage) is removing as much of those systemd (dis)services as possible.

P.S: main desktop is Debian + Awesome WM (so I do use systemd)

Debian-like without systemd: devuan. I actually use it instead of gentoo these days for VMs since I dont have to compile everything. Sacrilege, from me, gentoo user since 2005 or so.

systemd has plenty of negatives but it doesn't cause memory bloat.