I use mythic beasts. They are not the very cheapest, but they offer predictable pricing and just charge a fixed increase compared to the price they pay their supplier. You can trust that they won’t mess around with the renewal price or arbitrary extra fees.

For my .org domains I pay ~£15 per year, but if you don’t care about the tld, you can get some for ~£6 per year (the costs on the website exclude VAT, but if you buy multiple years at a time, the amortised cost including VAT ~= the price excluding VAT).

Wait is this how you get up to date when your system is past long term support?

Pretty much! You just modify the apt sources, and upgrade incrementing by each stable release until you reach current stable. Each upgrade guide has a section that points you to the guide for the previous version if your version doesn’t match.

Would not recommend doing backups drunk.

:D in my experience, there’s a certain amount of drink-inspired overconfidence that can be helpful, but it’s very easy to go over. I need more testing to find the exact line - it might also wrap around again if you drink more. More investigation needed :)

By dumbing down the suite, are you talking about things like flatpak / atomic distros?

If so, I am also not a fan of those things - give me Debian stable and the software in the repos and I’m happy - but I also don’t think I will be harmed by others coming in and trying different approaches. From what I can tell, with each paradigm shift, the old approach doesn’t go away, but stays powered by the volunteers who care about it.