Until 2014-15 it was my understanding that the approved way was to reinstall the OS every 6-7 months. Things would slowly stop working with drivers and software

Until 2014-15 it was my understanding that the approved way was to reinstall the OS every 6-7 months. Things would slowly stop working with drivers and software installations... (I briefly switched to Fedora, which is now my most long-lived linux install at 3-4 years, I gather that also debian and ubuntu got better over time)