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Except for the problem of out of date software... :)

Maybe on Stable. Sometimes. Not so much on Testing.

One is forced to wonder why they must choose between "stable" and "up to date" at an OS level.

because it takes a while to be sure that things are really stable.

server and desktop have different stability requirements. on a desktop i just need all user apps to work well. on a server i need things to be rock solid.

the newer the less stable things get. the distros i am familiar with i would sort in this order:

RHEL/centos > debian/ubuntu LTS > fedora/ubuntu > debian testing

fedora and ubuntu are stable enough for a desktop or client, but i'd never put them on a server.

For the same reasons that production, staging, and dev environments are standard.

Outside of Linux Desktop, the operating system and applications are considered separate beasts, so you're able to have a stable OS and a mix of stable/up-to-date applications as you see fit.

The package manager/distro model that Linux employs only ever seems to give you the choice of one or the other, because it doesn't have a clear differentiation between "OS" and "application".

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