These aren't good reasons

Why do you want a successor?

Is it on F-droid?

What is FLOSS?

Can someone explain what this is/does?

SSDs are way more reliable than spinning disks, especially in a laptop that gets banged around. HDDs win in only one category: capacity per price.

Was it once a joke?

Sometimes it's okay to use something you're familiar with and not have to learn (Debian). Fair enough on the snaps though; need to look into them before I form an opinion.

Why away from Ubuntu/Debian?

What'd Tim do again?

Common story, very funny though. I'm actually working at a SaaS vendor I used to use, and their search was unusable. I finally got to fix it and am very happy about it

What's a PWA?