I swear the delays in the woody -> sarge development cycle, 20 years ago, made such an impact on the internet’s collective memory that things like “Debian stable is old!” and “Freezes are something that you’ll definitely be aware of, let alone experience any problems from!” are still part of the collection of stereotypes that get repeated as knowledge.
I mean, those delays were huge. Debian’s longhorn. Whereas Fedora was pumping releases in a stable cadence, Debian was stuck in there. If it weren’t for that, probably Ubuntu wouldn’t bave existed.