This is one of the reasons I use Gentoo in my desktops: you can run a "stable" (as in old) system, but pull a more recent version of a library or application if you need it. For example, I remember having problems accessing files that I had stored in my mobile phone. Solution: updating libmtp and libmtp only. I suppose you can't do this in a distro such as Debian without upgrading half the packages.

Are there more distros that allow you to do this?