For something like libpng, there isn't any "instability and unreliability" and the code is hardly churning. Just `apt-get update` or `pacman -Syu` and you've go

For something like libpng, there isn't any "instability and unreliability" and the code is hardly churning. Just `apt-get update` or `pacman -Syu` and you've got the patched version, compatible with all binaries on your system. The only exception would be something like Chrome/Chromium that bundles a bunch of its own tweaked copies of common libraries. Or various closed-source software not controlled by your package manager, like some commercial games which have a linux build available. But many systems, like my home router/fileserver, and my workstation, don't have any of these exceptions, and they were updated in about 2 minutes. (I have no long running network daemons using libpng, but if I did they would be easy to restart.)