I don't think you are fair to Ubuntu in this comment. Change in Fedora or Debian Testing usually means breakage. I hear Arch breaks things now and then too. Even Windows breaks things... in all cases, this is avoided by choosing a stable or LTS variant and upgrading less frequently.

There aren't that many top tier distributions to choose from, the main choice is how much time you want packages tested before using them. If you want more testing and older packages, use Debian Stable, Ubuntu LTS, Redhat/CentOS... but don't stack the deck against Ubuntu by comparing its fresh distro to other people's LTS distros, compare apples to apples.

On Destkop there is reason to upgrade if you are using stock software and kernel (as I'm). Unity in 13.10 feels more responsive than in 13.04 was. Pretty much everything is bumped to newer versions. Even things in VirtualBox work faster now (13.04 was installing 4.2.10, but 13.10 is installing 4.2.16). Dont know what is the reason for speed gains - Kernel in Ubuntu or newer VirtualBox. One thing to do after upgrade is to disable smart scopes. No reason to share search queries with Canonical. I was hoping that 13.10 will solve my sound problems, but no luck. Just like in 13.04 i hear crackling noises. But those are specifics of my laptop.