You say upgrading every 6 months is low maintainence? Not to mention having new versions of everything pushed to you every week. Sorry, but I just don't have the bandwidth for that kind of thing.
If you had said Debian, I would have agreed, but Ubuntu is just a pain to maintain.
I use PCLinuxOS on my PC. So far, I don't have any qualms. Simple, easy to use and new releases come out when the developers feel the time is right.
There are the versions that are supported for 4 years. Boradband internet is good if you are running Ubuntu, that is true, but the actual effort of updating is not so bad (you could also automate it).
I have not yet run updates on my MacPort installation, but I would expect similar updates to Ubtuntu, except taking much longer (as MacPorts seems to compile everything on my Notebook, rather than downloading binaries). Or what do you mean by "everything"?
I don't know how the project is organized internally, but as a user it seems to me that the Ubuntu guys have no fixed schedule for pushing new updates. I will have updates to a few libs in the morning, then another, much larger update in the evening, followed by another small update next morning. If I don't install the updates, they pile up over time. These days, if I ever end up using Ubuntu, I never update anything unless it's something I need (eg, new version of Python, Emacs etc.).
I don't want new software as soon as it is released. I can do without bleeding edge software. I just want a safe, stable distro.
I think the updates are all security updates, which I personally want to get as soon as possible. It's true that a lot of times it seems like software I don't need, but who can tell in today's complex software environments? Maybe some other program I need relies on the program that I don't seem to need.
It's actually one thing that might speak against Ubuntu that for every release they freeze the version of the software version. At least that is my understanding. It is of course possible to install newer versions, but it would be more complicated than just using the package manager.
Another thing that just came to mind: if updates at random times bother you, I am sure you can configure the updater program to only check for updates once a week or something like that.
FWIW, Apple also pushes out hundreds of megabytes of updates I don't even need. At least the apt-based Linux distributions only try to update packages you have.
