> It works great if you're running a server with standard software from official distro repos that is infrequently updated.

It's not frequent updates that screwed you, it's using third party repos. OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is an RPM based rolling release distro with up-to-date software that I've found to be very suitable, and stable, for desktop use. Before switching to Tumbleweed, I previously used Debian Sid for a long time. Contrary to Sid's 'unstable' moniker, was always very stable for me when I wasn't pulling in 3rd party repos or trying to mix Sid with Stable (the notorious 'frankendebian'.)