I've never really Debian it in the past, so can't comment on the reality, just what I've heard, and even my Ubuntu experience is lacking. I'm running it as a virtual desktop now, but I try to keep my use of it to an MUA, web browser and terminals so I don't have to spend the time to become familiar with it, given it's got no other use for me so far.

Our director loves FreeBSD, and we actually use it for firewalls, so it's not a spectacularly hard sell. I'm not sure it's significantly different from the problems of Stream to make it worthwhile, at least not without some external patching and support entity in addition, but it's been a long time since I looked at the specifics of their packaging and ports systems. I don't actually mind something like Stream for a personal server actually. It's just when trying to manage a fleet in the tens and hundreds when it becomes a real liability and increased possible admin support load IMO.

Asking from curiosity, what is the problem you had with apt? I'm using Debian close to 20 years now, and liked Debian and .deb a lot, more then RPM even.

Honestly, having built some packages and maintaining a derivative provided me more insight than a regular user, but even before that I was using Debian without any problems.

BTW, Ubuntu is not Debian with a different UI. They're pretty different on fundamental things, even.

A broken pre/post install script (often the problem is not expecting the current state of your machine) that fails while running `apt-get install -f` it the common culprit.