[lorenzhs]

Does https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/apds03.en.html fit the bill for you? It's a bit outdated (does anyone still use lilo? It also talks of MBRs and grub-pc instead of grub-efi) and an updated version would be great, but you can substitute the modern replacements for the old stuff and it'll do the trick. An update to that guide would be nice. Nonetheless, I've installed dozens of systems that way (clean install of the new release on a second partition, set everything up, reboot for an upgrade with less than 5 minutes of downtime and the option to go back to the old install at any time with a simple reboot (which is a requirement for these machines)) and it works fantastically.

I also use sid (with apt-listbugs) on my personal machines and can't remember the last time I had something break. You should definitely know your way around a Debian system in case something does break, but it's not any more prone to breakage than Arch in my opinion.