This is where I keep track of what I want out of my home Linux workstation. It probably applies more generally, for example if I were to set-up a Linux workstation at work, or a Linux laptop (though the latter is fraught with extra caveats).
The reason I finally started keeping track of this is because I wanted to deal with the problem of upgrading. I dread upgrading. Things break, and while fixing that kind of stuff is what I do for a living, I usually don't have time to deal with it in my personal life. But naturally, I want to reap the benefits of upgrading too (e.g., more updated video drivers for Steam).
Here is where I plan to document the things I want to remain stable across upgrades: any special software I have installed, any must-have tools, any specific hardware support, and research on any replacements for any of the above that happen to get discontinued (e.g., crony is a replacement for ntpd). Because let's face it: I forget these things, and I need to write them down somewhere.
Largely, I use Fedora, because it strikes a nice balance between stability and wide-ranging inclusion of repositories of lots of pre-packagesd software. While I do enjoy the occasional tinkering with other more rough-and-tumble distros, I'd rather save that for hardware that I don't depend on. And if I cared about celebrity endorsement, I could always point at Linus and cite that Fedora is the distro he uses. ;-)