Plenty of software vendors provide packages that are compatible across releases such as google chrome and mariadb. Checkout Mariadb's releases for Ubuntu: http

Plenty of software vendors provide packages that are compatible across releases such as google chrome and mariadb. Checkout Mariadb's releases for Ubuntu: http://mirrors.syringanetworks.net/mariadb//mariadb-10.3.11/repo/ubuntu/dists/ http://mirrors.syringanetworks.net/mariadb//mariadb-10.3.11/... Just the system packages need to be stable (eg, distro's repos). Also worth mentioning is snaps and flatpacks (though I'm not personally a fan, they do exist).