I moved to Ubuntu from Mandrake (yes, this was long ago) for the reliability of Apt and Debian packaging. I've generally been happy with how Ubuntu manages updates for LTS editions. Such as: the combination of reliable security patching, kernel updates and with a few applications kept very current (e.g. Firefox).
The two-yearly LTS updates have gone smoothly (bar one a very long time ago) although hardware updates about every 5 years means I do LTS-to-LTS perhaps half the time.
I used to occasionally try other distros, but nothing about them ever gave me anything of actual value for my usage.
However, I will mention that I long ago changed to installing to external USB drives instead of to the internal drive of a computer. This let my USB drive "be my real system" and the computer just a thing to run it on.
I moved to Ubuntu from Mandrake (yes, this was long ago) for the reliability of Apt and Debian packaging. I've generally been happy with how Ubuntu manages updates for LTS editions. Such as: the combination of reliable security patching, kernel updates and with a few applications kept very current (e.g. Firefox).
The two-yearly LTS updates have gone smoothly (bar one a very long time ago) although hardware updates about every 5 years means I do LTS-to-LTS perhaps half the time.
I used to occasionally try other distros, but nothing about them ever gave me anything of actual value for my usage.
However, I will mention that I long ago changed to installing to external USB drives instead of to the internal drive of a computer. This let my USB drive "be my real system" and the computer just a thing to run it on.
I recently wrote up my current method for making this kind of setup, see:
dev.to/geraldew/ubuntu-linux-insta...