Comment by willtim

IMHO the best option currently for a stable OS with up-to-date desktop apps is NixOS. NixOS allows one to have a stable base OS then install packages in the user account from a different channel. Since it uses deterministic builds, the binary caches typically mean no building needs to happen locally. NixOS permits multiple versions of any application/library/dependency to be installed side-by-side, even libc. I run such a configuration and all my desktop packages are completely up-to-date, while my base OS and system components are tracking a stable release.