Out of curiosity, and as a learning opportunity for me, how did you reach that decision?
Unless you plan to do more than simply ‘see’ planes and ‘feed’ them to FA, there is no cons to using the Piaware image, only pros, including re-imaging and being back in service in a couple of minutes, if it comes to that.
As a matter of fact, I don’t even bother with OS updates. If there is a serious issue, FA will release a new image, hopefully, and it’ll be up and running in a couple of minutes.
If you want more control and ‘freedom of movement’, then installing the packages individually is the way to go.
Actually, I now keep a spare SD already configured, so ‘returning to service’ is even faster.