LTS on Desktop Often an Illusion

The initial paragraph wasn't too clear, but the comments on the End of 
Life SuSE release in http://lwn.net/Articles/263153/ explain the 
conundrums and illusion of desktop support, with just security updates, 
3rd parties may not release fixed binaries which will work.

I think the Gentoo updates (as well as Debian) will work better done 
regularly, simply because that's what the updates are tested with.  A 
new "Release" causes much more trouble, because it has to support the full 
system upgrade, between high impact changes.  Frankly even just tracking 
security patches in more traditional update models, it's wise to check 
them out on "sacrificial" systems.