I have a number of CentOS machines that have been up 24/7 in datacenter
environments for years and were only rebooted on occasion as a result of
security-related kernel upgrades (which would affect any linux distro).
I can't recall EVER having uptime or network-related issues on ANY live
CentOS server that wasn't the direct result of a hardware failure.  It
just works...and works...and works.  :)  The key is to beat up on any
new hardware in a test environment first to make sure that you don't
have any incompatible hardware bits (which hasn't bitten me often).

Thank you for your point, on which I wholly agree, but I was taking "stability" as "a measure of velocity in change" of a system's components-- here reflected in a shorter or longer life cycle for each version. Please correct me if I am wrong, I may be misusing the word (I am heading right to Wikipedia in a minute! :) ).