I think it probably depends on the distro, I've had quite a few systems break on Arch because I didn't read update warnings on the Arch Linux website after they had pushed a bad update.

Tangentially that is why I moved to xubuntu from Arch, though I'm sure Arch is a bit nicer with regards to headaches now.

Fedora likes to break frequently though I don't know if packages as big as X are likely to fall through the cracks.

Both Arch and, to a lesser extent, Fedora are aimed at more advanced users who want faster updates and newer technology over stability.

I think this is a great compromise, but it does mean you may have some issues with updates. That said, I have not had any issues on Fedora that weren't my doing.

I've been using Fedora for about a year. Earlier, I used OS X for about the same amount of time and I did have problems that weren't entirely my fault, largely with Java and Eclipse. Since all I was doing during that time was simple Java development for school, there just wasn't anything else that could have gone wrong.