> I'm continually baffled that so many companies follow RHEL compatibility to this day.
Because RHEL, and subsequently it's clones, are a really good server OS. You get updates for 10 years, Red Hat or it's employees maintain a large chunk of the generic-Linux stack, large software support, Cockpit, more modern features when compared to the Debian version at the same time (e.g. dracut, firewalld, systemd, NetworkManager, Podman etc).
Then when you want commercial support, converting to RHEL (or vice versa) it's painless and quick.
Because RHEL, and subsequently it's clones, are a really good server OS. You get updates for 10 years, Red Hat or it's employees maintain a large chunk of the generic-Linux stack, large software support, Cockpit, more modern features when compared to the Debian version at the same time (e.g. dracut, firewalld, systemd, NetworkManager, Podman etc).
Then when you want commercial support, converting to RHEL (or vice versa) it's painless and quick.