What are the most stable distros?

What would this esteemed forum's opinions suggest are the top 3 or 4 most
stable (different) Linux distros for personal use (not as a server)?

While it seems to have been almost universally the case that the hundreds
of Linux distros are continually competing to be the latest and greatest,
most advanced, cutting-edge systems -- continually being "updated" and
made ever-more glitzy and fancy.

However, are there any distros that strive instead to be rock-solid,
stable, steady work-horses ... rarely (preferably never) requiring
"updates" just to add in more and more of the latest new-fangled whatever?

Personally, I have preferred distros based on Redhat rather than ubuntu
(Mandrake/Mandriva and PCLinuxOS). I am interested *only* in a
personal-use system mainly for work. And I have zero interest in games. I
really liked the KDE 3.5 system, but I detest KDE 4+ with all of its
nuisance "widgets" and clutter. And I don't care for Gnome.

Ideally, I would like a system that is as concise and non-bloated as
possible. Every time I have done an "update" on every system I have ever
had, it has resulted in a lot of nuisance issues/problems that have wasted
a lot of time trying to sort out all those issues so I could get back to
work.

While I realize that the usual reply to a question like this is that
*every* system needs to be frequently "updated" for security reasons ...
that seems to me to be a needless nuisance. I have several older systems
that have run efficiently and reliably 24/7 for years and have *never*
been updated ... and I have never had a problem with them. But they are
now several years old and I would like to get something newer.

What say you?




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