Managing systems is complex. Its gotten better since the days I was mucking about with hpux ignite to make sure all the systems were running the same software/

Managing systems is complex. Its gotten better since the days I was mucking about with hpux ignite to make sure all the systems were running the same software/libraries. But there are still a lot of complex inter-dependencies of the base OS and the Apps running on top of it. It would be great to decouple the two, but I'm a little skeptical that these updates still won't require some testing of software running on them before deploying. Or are the linux libraries stable enough that these migrations are easier now?