updates to new releases automatically?

the one thing that has always stopped me from making the full jump and use Linux exclusively is backing up everything each time a stable release is out and installing the latest distro release.

Which Linux distro (if any) can you update to a new release automatically through and update manager? Thanks.

The most popular distros that can update automatically with the manager are Mandriva, Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, Red Hat, OpenSuse, Gentoo, Mint, PCLinuxOS, Arch, Sabayon.
The popular distros that do not do that by default are Slackware, some derivatives and LFS. And they do not for a reason. You can still do it with additional software on those distros.
Anyway, you can still install a new version of slackware and keep your data. For that, you should have a separate /home partition, which is a good idea anyway.

newbie1029,

PCLinuxOS is what's known as a "rolling release" distro, which means that as long as you keep your system up-to-date, via the Synaptic package manager, you will always have the most up-to-date version of PCLinuxOS. This means that you will have to go into Synaptic periodically to check for updates (or you can use the Update Notifier application to automatically inform you that updates are available), it's easier than ... washing your hair, or any other number of things that you routinely do without much thought.

parnote