However, once you have it up and running, it is trivial to keep it up-to-date, which is why I haven't had to 're-install' anything from scratch over the past couple of years.

Same here, but on Redhat using up2date instead of apt-get (or whatever it's called, I've never used Debian).

P.S. Yes, I realise apt has some advantages over rpm in resolving package dependancies, but I have never had a problem in this area with rpm on RedHat anyway.