incentive

It really depends on the situation. Hardware support is definitely better than it used to be and everything in linux is hackable regardless of distribution if needed, but the reason I haven’t switched my main tower from Arch to Debian is that fear of requiring extra work for things like gaming and music production. If you’re running the newest and latest hardware you might run into an issue depending on the kernel version being used, etc.,

That being said, I use Debian every day on my thinkpad and love it. I have an interest in migrating away from Ubuntu Server and toward Debian for servers as well. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it “not recommended”, just similar caution expressed.

Huge

Template for setting up your new VMs - after setting up your first template its a few clicks and deploy for new VMs

Signal is probably your best bet but it’s only mostly open source. Element/Matrix is another good option if open source is your concern.