Might try Knoppix - for some reason I thought it was RedHat-based - otherwise I've found the Debian Derivatives Census which provides others to check out. (Would be nice if they had basic filtering functionality.)
I hacked with URLs to find 9.5/Stretch (stable) on a mirror - wanted to try 10/Buster (testing) but looks like the weekly releases are only on the offline official servers - though I still need to find a spare USB drive to put it on.
Wish someone would hire me to lead a bunch of Linux developers too; if even half my thoughts could be translated into software the result would be superb.