Yeah, I like having a few isos on Ventoy for live booting from random PCs for troubleshooting. Very convenient being able to have multiple architectures, DEs, versions of distros to boot from on one drive.

It is well established, if niche, software. I think your sketchometer needs calibration.

I would recommend Mint for an easier transition, its what I jumped to from Ubuntu due to Canonical’s behavior and I’ve been happy. It is definitely simpler to use than Debian - which is not to say anything bad about Debian. It’s just less hand-holdy. I like it for servers.