I have heard advice not to use the Ubuntu version upgrade. All I can say is I was lucky--it always worked for me.

I also worry about things such as, What happens if my ISP goes down during an upgrade? They have been very reliable, but drivers still drive into trees and roadside boxes, circuit boards burn out, stuff happens.

I have encountered some glitches since switching to Slackware --Current. GTKam no longer likes me after an update. I poked around a bit and determined one of the libraries it needs got updated out from under it; since I'm lazy, I just put the camera's SD card in the card slot and tell myself that that's life with a testing distro.

There was a short period after one update that the wireless dropped several times a day for a couple of weeks, so I used a cable, but the wireless has been back to being stable for some time now.

I'll probably eventually get around to wiping and reinstalling, but I've got upwards of 30 Slackbuilds installed on my primary laptop, every one of which is there for a reason (the reason is that it's my primary computer and any serious stuff I do I do on it), so I know I'll put off reinstalling as long as possible.

updates and upgrades are very different things

but jens above did make a nice point
Fedora

i used it from 4 to 11

and updates did from time to time kill things

as a recall there was one pam update that made a mess of things
the kernel updates with the kmod-nvidia update released 3 to 7 days LATER
( that drove most to use the .run driver)

but fedora is a special case being a R and D distro .
if you use it you better be willing to except it for what it is

Well, with Slackware --Current, you do "upgrade," but it's gradual as the updates happen.

I started with 13.37 and am now on 14.0 just by updating.

I agree about Fedora. I did use if for a while just for kicks, but nothing convinced me to keep it around.

I understand that some folks like to be bleeding edge and more power to them--without them, bugs would never get squashed--but I have not yet run into a usage that demanded bleeding edge in what I need to do with my computers.

Never a problem with slackware.

But in general, no pain because i always do backup before.

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There is no such thing as too many backups.

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The package manager should stop the upgrade process before the actual upgrade it even begins, since both, apt-get/aptitude and slackpkg (in -current), download the packages before starting the upgrade.

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for an "upgrade" i would use the install dvd

That is truly a useful tidbit!

I'm a *buntu user, and for a while there, I did hold my breath for system/kernel upgrades, but I have to say, haven't had to worry since Meerkat... Everything from Meerkat on has gone precisely as planned

With some Opensuse upgrades I have looked through the gaps in my fingers sometimes... Normally I don't upgrade as its sometimes a good time to reinstall. I run Debian on my servers and clouds. That, so far, hasn't caused any issues.