Debian stable is for you then. If you’re just looking to SSH, you can install it without a desktop environment. If you want a GUI, you can install XFCE (light) or LXQT (very light).
You can go minimal with Debian to keep it fast, and its release cadence is do an update every 2 years and just do security updates in the interim. So if you go 6 months without updating, you’ll just get a handful of security patches without any system-breaking. If you plan on leaving it on for days at a time, you can also use the unattended-upgrade package to auto update.
Debian stable is for you then. If you’re just looking to SSH, you can install it without a desktop environment. If you want a GUI, you can install XFCE (light) or LXQT (very light).
You can go minimal with Debian to keep it fast, and its release cadence is do an update every 2 years and just do security updates in the interim. So if you go 6 months without updating, you’ll just get a handful of security patches without any system-breaking. If you plan on leaving it on for days at a time, you can also use the unattended-upgrade package to auto update.