Is it OK to stay with an older version of a Distro?
 

If everything is working great in my current Distro is it OK just to stay put instead of upgrading to the latest with all the changes and updates. Will my older version still work later on? Just tired of all the constant changes that I often don't need.
Thanks

It will work the only problem that you will have is on updates (there areapps that updates the system especially in ubuntu distro). Also new apps may won't work in an old Distro. I think that you should upgrate it!!!!

If you are using ubuntu, I would recommend to use a distro with LTS, for ubuntu they are released every two years and supported for three years (I think). The distros in between are unsupported after a while, and you will no longer get security updates. I'm not sure how long a regular ubuntu release is maintained.

The good old CentOS 5, now 5.5 is from 2007.
Constantly security updated.
A very few packages are changed to a later version.
( Examples : Firefox 3.6.x and a gcc44 = gcc4.4.0.)

CentOS 5 is supported / updated till 2014.
..

IIRC non-LTS *Buntu releases are supported 18 months, while Desktop LTS releases get 3 years support, and server-LTS releases 5 years.

With Arch, I learned the hard way that you must ALWAYS do a system upgrade before installing new things. (Arch is "rolling release", so they are setup accordingly).

If your distro operates on specific incremnetal releases, then you should have no problem installing new things using their repositories. When you install something not available in the repos, then you'll have to track down all the latest libraries.

So perhaps the answer is that you never need to upgrade---unless you need to.....;)

Basically it's not OK if the distro is no longer maintained.

Why is it not OK? Because you no longer get security updates, so newly discovered vulnerabilities will not be fixed.

It's possible to get a little paranoid about updates. The shortest support period is probably Fedora, with 13 months. Any major security holes are likely to be found in that time. It also depends on how you use your machine. My computer, connected to the internet via a hard-wired router with built-in firewall, is a lot less open to attack than a web server. I'm sticking with Fedora 10 (unsupported) until CentOS 6 comes out, and I shan't loose any sleep.