More bugs, but also more functionality

I'm fully aware that the over-all value of Linux on the desktop today vastly exceeds that of
even 5 years ago.  My desktop can do things today that either couldn't be done back then or
which required me to waste hour upon hour learning one-off tricks or overly specialized (and
soon to disappear) tools to get something done.  (And while I don't at all mind learning about
how my computer works or learning new techniques to do things faster/better, being forced to
learn essentially useless tricks for short-lived tools to work around when I should be able to
do in minutes is not fun... I have other things I'd rather do, like talk a walk, read a book,
play guitar, get laid, etc.)

My problem is simply that the number of bugs I encounter in each distro release seems to be
getting larger and larger compared to previous releases while -- at the same time -- certain
distros are expending a massive amount of developer effort on those afore-mentioned one-off
temporary tools and hacks.

Let's take Ubuntu and GNOME as an example.  The time spent breaking Nautilus (the combination
of spatial+navigator interfaces they baked up and most of us hated), the time spent breaking
the logout dialog (with the weird button layout and confused some and just irritated others),
the time spent writing some of the custom GTK config tools that never quite worked right
instead of using GST or Red Hat's open source tools, the time spent completely rewriting the
installer as a GTK app to run on a barely-usable LiveCD, etc... if they used that time solely
to push upstream bug fixes to stable releases, we'd have a better quality OS all around.  We'd
have way less UI churn every six months (a lot of those custom Ubuntu hacks get dropped the
very next release after they realize what a waste and how broken they are) which is good for
users, we wouldn't be forced to wait 5-7 months to get critical driver fixes (like the
cups/foomatic update I needed for my printer), and so on.

A lot of people laud Ubuntu for its 6 month release cycle.  Or Fedora now, same thing.  But
really, why should I have to upgrade my ENTIRE OS - top to bottom - just to get an updated
driver or two or to get a couple fixed bugs?  (As a side note, I usually run development
distros at home, so I know full well the mindset of the Linux/FOSS user types who don't mind
constantly upgrading everything... I swear, some of us must have actual addictions to seeing
new packages being installed.)

Basically, if you want to sum up:

(a) distros need to stop customizing upstream sources without damn good cause
(b) distros should push stable updates to released OSes more often and shove whole-new distro
releases down our throats less often