The Linux distributions generally promote a different way of looking at programs.
Basically, there are 2 types of stability. There's code stability, that a particular way of doing things will continue to work for a long time, and there's running stability, that a program will be operating without errors.
Traditional software, like what Apple and Microsoft support, do code stability. They trade away flexibility and corporate responsiveness for the ability to compile once and sell your program to a lot of people. There are some Linux distributions that promise similar stability, and get supported by traditional companies like Oracle, but then your platform is not "Linux" but "Red Hat Enterprise Linux" or "Ubuntu LTS." You get most of the code stability benefits of RHEL without the support contract by going with CentOS, I guess.
People tend to like the flashy, and open-source developers frequently mix bug fixes with new features, so things like Fedora 7 and Ubuntu 7.04 get all the attention. Software and hardware that used to work might not work anymore, but what does work is likely to work better than the long-term releases. Except that it's more likely for buggy updates to get through, like what happened with Ubuntu 6.10.
Personally, I prefer the Debian style of upgrades to the Red Hat style, so I'm more likely to try Ubuntu than Fedora. I also have a bit more trust in the OSS community's response to bugs than in Apple or Microsoft. Except for specific programs like PHP. For my personal systems, I don't need to be bothered by the minutiae of finding all the fixes to problems, as long as the community is taking care of it and the updater is working.