I'm sorry if you feel like I point them towards my "pet OS". I should have stated more clearly there are other alternatives, and this only is my opinion.
The maybe a advantage (if you agree with the OP)/maybe a disadvantage(if you like me, don't): Much more manual configuration.
I think it's a pretty good model. For 90% of the installed software there's really no reason to update packages more than every 6 months.