Considering I never had to reinstall a Debian system because it got bloated or broke one day, I can accept this slow-cooking approach. Even support them on this regard.
Gentoo Linux has quite a different approach than Debian [0] but after the first month or two (once my new-to-Linux ass figured out what it was doing) I've never had to reinstall any Gentoo system. [1]
If you want what Debian provides, it's a poor choice for you... but -IME- it doesn't break on upgrade, unlike some Debian-derived distros I've tried in the past.
[0] Something along the lines of "Always try to package exactly what's provided by upstream, try hard to get distro patches upstreamed, and try to have the latest available upstream release in the 'testing channel'.".
[1] Well, I do have a machine that (aside from "side-loading" kernel updates from time to time) hasn't been updated in four years. While I'll try to update that one in the normal way, I'm probably going to need to reinstall.
