NixOS. you get out of it what you put into. the initial setup might take a bit but once you have it set up to your liking then that's it, you can just leave it alone until you want to update it whenever that may be. it's extremely re-producible, you can git repo your config, install it where ever or on whatever machine so if you ever do upgarde then you can take your system with you. with the generations if you happen to break something or mess up a config it's just a matter of going back to the previous generation and undoing whatever you did.
you can configure it in a way that it will work well on your machine. easy to change kernel params via the nix config, ssd/hdd settings, cpu settings, etc. the only time it gets heavy is when you update it but like I said you update it whenever you feel like updating it. you could leave it alone for a year if you really wanted to. it's still going to work.