New releases breaking previously working services.

This isn't a Linux annoyance, per se, more of a distribution annoyance,
but I have run into the problem on both Mandrake and SuSE. Why does
something that is working perfectly fine get broken in the next release?
For example, the sound on the IBM Aptiva I was using at the time worked
fine with Mandrake 7.2, but when I upgraded to 8.0 I had to install a
separate sound card to get it to work, the onboard sound never worked.
Mandrake 9.0 broke a previously perfectly working ADSL connection.

I'm currently using SuSE 8.2 at home and had it installed on the office
computer. There were some minor problems getting the Canon S-450 printer
to work, and I never did get it to print on 8.5X14 paper, but otherwise it
worked fine. I upgraded the office machine to SuSE 9.0 and now the printer
always adds an extra 1 inch to the top margin, no matter which
configuration I use. We can, but shouldn't have to, compensate for that
with most correspondence, but printing the ~1000 mailing labels we need
every month is impossible. I guess I'll reinstall 8.2 on the office box.

It seems to me that something that works shouldn't get broken in future
releases.


Hank