That must be the single most absurb opinion I have read here on LQ.

The choice of file system is very important and migrating a whole installation to change file system is hard, annoying, time consuming and error prone. It's definitely something you want to measure five times and cut only once.

The installation procedure is also useless if you can't make heads and tails of what is going where and how. That is something that will absolutely force you to measure 15 times and probably cut three or four times.

Maybe you can't have an installer that will work for everybody, but removing options will certainly cause it to work to fewer people. We all know how these things work, with if clauses. If an installer can let you choose location, time zone, keyboard layout (I remember when that was a luxury too, and people would lock themselves out with mistyped passwords), host name or even repository mirrors, why shouldn't you be able to choose something as important as file system type?

Do you know what won't let you choose file system type? Windows, because it only has one. But if you add a volume later that is smaller than 2TB you can choose between NTFS and FAT32. BSDs also don't give you the choice because they only have one. FreeBSD has two and they are selectable at installation time. Which is to say, even a BSD will let you choose file system type.

"Once" every six to eight years, but it's never really once. I always end up installing multiple times until I get it right, because installers are bad. I see it's getting better now with Calamares, but I also see that most distros underuse it. Spiral is the only distro that is doing it well done. Also, things change. My current installation is not encrypted, only personal data is. So it was easier to have control of the partition format then. But that has always bothered me. The installation is naked. It's an attack vector. Shouldn't Linux users be super duper ultra mega concerned with security? Shouldn't we ALL be encrypting EVERYTHING in this day and age? Pro tip: don't make it difficult. Also, things change. Btrfs is an important player in the game now. I've used ext3, ext4, xfs and btrfs for multiple years each (even reiserfs for a few months back in the day) and I can say Btrfs is the best one out there. Well, it's the best one for me. RedHat ditched it and it seems that a lot of people decided to follow RedHat's cue. Well, how good do RedHat decisions look to you now, in light of recent events?

Meanwhile, a lot of people nag Linus Torvalds to include ZFS in the kernel, and nobody is telling them, "Hey, choice of file system is not important." Nobody will say that because ZFS is the darling of system administrators, and system administrators are first class users. Desktop users still are second class users in Linuxland. They're now saying, "You don't need X. You don't need screen recording, Mr. Podcaster. You don't need color accuracy, Mr. Photographer and Mrs. Graphical Designer." Why not? Because security, that's why. But choosing file system type in an encrypted disk is asking too much?

A good installer also means someone who knows what they're doing dealing with Grub2 on my behalf. God, am I thankful for that. Grub2 is by far the single most horrible piece of software I've ever had to configure in Linux. I always DREAD running update-grub. I refuse to update grub if I don't have many free hours available to update all my backups first. I bite my nails in terror when that little monster is running and I wait for the command output. Grub1 was fine, but Grub2 is a nightmare, and it's not hard to find other people who agree with that assessment. Not hard at all.

I feel compelled to remind you: the single most important feature in Linux for me is the multitude of choices. If I liked the one-size-fits-all nonsense, I would be using Windows. Saying the installer is not an important thing is on par with Steve Jobs saying "You don't need buttons."

I have two more tests to do today, at the end of the day. I will be back.

#1 I knew that ANTIX used repos of its own, I had not realized it ALSO used Debian repos. Seems risky, but one cannot argue with success! I would love to discuss that elsewhere, but it does not pertain to this discussion the way I thought the OP wanted it to.

#2 Sparky is one of the best Debian spinoffs in my opinion. I loved the older versions, like the rolling/semi rolling stuff. I love the look and feel, they have made some excellent choices!

#3 Anything not pretty cutting edge should not be using BTRFS, simply because of the stability issues it has had and the rate of improvement. You want to use only the latest code and BTRFS utilities. (Although things ARE getting better, there are still some faults that have not been solved for YEARS now.) That means cutting edge stuff, which may not be optimal if you need stability in other areas. (I am currently using it, but only on ARCH/Manjaro based stuff running kernel in the 6.4 and 6.5 versions. Sparky on Testing might be the equivalent.)

Before I moved over to ARCH I did install Debian using BTRFS for testing, but I used the manual install method that bypasses much of the hardware portion of the installers. I ONLY tested a single version, and it worked fine for me: but I tend to not look close at the installer since I use them only for a few minutes then test the installed system for days.

Back to the original post "What distros use Debian repositories: This is a deal breaker for me: Debian repositories. What distros use them?"
It sounds like you really want distributions that do NOT use Debian repositories, and at first that mislead me. You want distributions that are NOT Debian but that DO use Debian repositories. For that I would stand by the already mentioned Sparky, and searcing Distrowatch for others if that does not suit you.

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Why is it risky? I've had some Ubuntu packages in my Debian installation for a long time. No problems.

I can't speak for others, but your comments will be welcome to me. I may disagree with them, but that is potentially more useful than reading opinions that I already espouse myself.

I actually wrote something about that and deleted it because I thought it wouldn't be relevant. But yes, Sparky is the only one I tested that I liked. I still prefer things the way I have them now, but I think I could use Sparky every day and not miss my current installation too much.

Apart from RAID, what stability issues? I have been using it for four years on a 4.x-era kernel and never had a single issue. I've had at least a dozen hard resets and never lost data. Everything has been hunky-dory for me. I admit I am afraid of using it with a newer kernel because I don't trust newer things, but I'm willing to take my chances and, the most important thing, it is my call. It's my machine, this is my decision, and an installer has to let me choose.

You are right. Now I see my wording is ambiguous and very possibly misleading. I wish I had written it differently. But it's done now.

You definitely misunderstood. Obviously there are [basic] requirements, which should be fulfilled. But because of its nature it cannot and will not be 100% suitable for every needs.
You can also replace the root filesystem later if you wish, but obviously it is not an easy task and actually quite unusual - just it is possible.
No software will do exactly what you want, the way you want, but the one you write yourself.

Those entrances in order made me laugh.

My Pro Tip: If you want to keep things simple, don't mess with encryption, it just complicates things.

"replace the root filesystem later" is exactly what I meant by "migrating a whole installation to change file system."

How is running mkfs.btrfs instead of mkfs.ext4 after encrypting the device block "complicating things"?

Nah, I meant using encrypted drive complicates things. For one gotta enter a password to boot even when it's working right. And when things go wrong, you can't even get at your data, everything is more complicated or impossible, etc.

If you want to keep things simple, definitely dont encrypt anything.

Not risky between Ubuntu and Debian for the same reasons (although it can be easy to create and unstable system by accidently pulling a Debian replacement for an Ubuntu app). Between a Systemd distribution and a non-systemd distribution one wrong pull could suddenly drag in all of the systemd stuff that you worked so hard to keep out. (Or something that will break because the installer for it is written to ASSUME or ENFORCE that systemd WILL be there before it lands!)

BTRFS instability is all around RAID (specifically RAID level 5/6) and recovery. You are better off running a more recent kernel, because the FS drivers are MUCH better in the newer kernels. Not ll of the issues are resolved, but it keeps getting better! ;-)

I agree. But I have never had an installer stand in my way. All I have to do is do the partitioning manually and lay on the file systems "I" decide to use.

I have been doing this stuff since before Linux was an option, and doing Linux since you ALWAYS had to manually prep the storage. An installer with that defaults to your choices is nice, but if I do not like the defaults I just bypass that part and do it the way I choose.

You know in simple cases you can use those "alien" packages without problems, but in general nothing is guaranteed (like compatibility with anything else, upgrade-ability), you may have conflicting packages, versioning relates issues and who knows what else. In short, unsupported.
In more difficult cases it won't work at all.

Anyway, I still don't understand what is it all about. Choose your preferred distro, installer, do whatever you want on your own host, no problem at all. But don't expect us to agree with you on everything (or anything).

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The issue is that the lighter and the stove have been invented, and people keep telling me that there is nothing wrong with rubbing two sticks together to cook dinner.

Compounded by the fact that this is all about software, i.e. it's just a matter of adding one or two if clauses somewhere. There is no budget for materials involved.

You need to stop worrying about that. All currently maintained distributions are well above the "two sticks" level. Debian is one of the well maintained that advances on the cutting edge the SLOWEST, in part because of the MASSIVE array of supported packages. You can GET a "two sticks" distro up, and some of them are very useful, but the normal is for them to be pretty current.

IF you WANT cutting edge go SPARKY ROLLING, Fedora, Manjaro (or ARCH if you don't mind bleeding a bit more). The most cutting edge desktop is KDE PLASMA running on WAYLAND. If you are running a server, stay OFF the cutting edge: it is no place for critical data or server functions. If you dislike the look and feel, change it. It is not like it has gotten more difficult to tune the look and feel of desktops! The cutting edge distributions have the cutting edge customization tools!