So we say that like Slackware is extremely stable. Debian is also very very stable. CentOS is very stable. They are good for highly loaded servers. But Ubuntu ain't stable, Fedora is also not stable (no offence or flamewar!), etc... This all is about crashes, not updates. What makes a distro stable? Why is Slackware one of the most stable distros while Fedora is pretty buggy if they both have fresh software?

There was a thread in the Slackware forum about this.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...stable-832421/

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yup.good question... i'm curious also.
i guess, that debian doesn't try to come all very bundled(which is a - for me BTW) , the same slacware , you have to pretty much configure everything.. so , in fedora , i haven't noticed you have to configure stuff , netiher in ubuntu. you only have to make your wireless work if you have broadcom , and web camera and integrated mic , but that's pretty much all .. i didn't have to configure nothing with ubuntu.,..

"Stable" doesn't only mean it's less likely to crash, it also means relatively unchanging: only updated with necessary security patches.

What about important extremely highly loaded servers? Why isn't it recommended to install something like Fedora/Ubuntu/Mandriva/OpenSUSE there? If one builds such a server, he will use Debian/CentOS/Slackware, but not others (like those I mentioned).

Another contributing factor to a distro's stability are good/bad practices of its user.

Debian, Slackware and CentOS (or RHEL) have a much longer release-cycle than Ubuntu or Fedora, so there is a lot of time to find and get rid of bugs. Ubuntu has a fixed release cycle of six months, and it released whether it is buggy or not. Fedora also has such a short release cycle, but is meant as development platform and testing area for the next release of RHEL (and therefor CentOS).
Another aspect of this long release cycle for the stable distributions is that you don't have to upgrade your OS all six months. This not desired on a server, where downtime because of failures after an upgrade (not uncommon with Ubuntu) costs money.

For openSuse, if you want Suse on a server, you chould use SLES (Suse Linux Enterprise Server). With openSuse it is the same as with Fedora I think, mostly it is a development platform for their enterprise OS.

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Ubuntu and Fedora have to slap together a new version every six months. Debian, RHEL, etc have much longer release cycles, which means more time to squash bugs and produce more stable distributions.