2011-09-11, 01:12 PM
I'm not convinced "monthly release cycle" means "a different OS every month", more "new updates released every month".
Firefox is a slightly different situation: with firefox, you need to download the entire package and install it - just like you do with the flash plugin (except it seems to be every day). With a Linux distro, you only download updates (updated packages) and also you don't need to download them all - only the ones you are using (so a sendmail update won't affect me, for instance).
Let's not forget that Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint etc are intended to be desktop OSes and will have faster change cycles than Debian/CentOS that are regarded as Server OSes, given the speed that desktop applications change. Having longer periods between updates means having to wait longer for newer technology and/or bugfixes.
And there's the bottom line of: you're not *forced* to update. I'm still running Ubuntu10.10 and not upgraded to 11 yet. Apart from flash being a hog from time to time, the rest of it is fairly stable and hasn't really given me a reason to upgrade.