Hello, great to see you on here! I’ve followed your posts about this in the past and I have looked at the source of the Buster-based XFCE image exactly as you said. I should check out your Bookworm source too.
I also used to think Debian was a good distro lacking good config, and that was the advantage which Ubuntu brought to the table. Then I started using Debian full time and realised I was wrong. Once you set a graphical theme and make a few tweaks there isn’t a great amount of difference from more friendly distros like Ubuntu or PopOS. I suspect this also has something to do with just how good Bookworm is. I’m also arguably an advanced user so I don’t find the things which Spiral does are difficult to understand or to do myself if I want.
SpiralLinux wasn’t the only factor in why I ditched Ubuntu and switched to Debian, but you definitely helped me to see that Debian is a viable good desktop distro and that it really doesn’t need a lot of changes from the base install, and for that I’m very grateful. Thank you.
For me, the thing holding me back from doing SpiralLinux installs is Calamares. I want to do a custom partition encrypted LVM install and Calamares just can’t do that. So unfortunately in this way, Spiral is worse than plain Debian. If Spiral offered an install iso which used the proper superior debian-installer that would be quite compelling to me, but maybe additional needless work for you.
In any case, if you are bringing new users to Debian then it’s a win.