That is only for the first setup of a new OS.You have 10, so that's 10 hours (at your suggested 1hr/Pi).You only have to do setup once.
I have 10 and many more SD Cards, after initial setup use SD Copier although I have 32 bit and 64 bit . Weekly updates only take a few minutes at most.
It is still < 10 minutes; to do a copy and change hostname.
My Pi use one of
Raspbian Buster 10.13 Original 2019-06-20
Raspbian Bullseye 11.8 Original 2021-10-30
Debian Bullseye 11.8 - 64 Original 2022-01-28
Debian Bookworm 12.5 - 64 Original 2023-10-10
(I have a few older SD Cards but not in active use, including Raspbian Stretch 9.13 Original 2018-11-13 on a Pi B + which has been logging data for 5 years.)
If people WANT to do a fresh install every time a new image is produced that is their choice, but there is no conceivable benefit over an upgrade.
Statistics: Posted by Milliways — Mon Feb 12, 2024 12:03 pm