Thats nonsense, a broken Linux distro is not cost effective to fix because the number of breakpoints is innumerable. Zounds of configuration files, buggy software any an extremely branching entry point and shared dependencies make it quicker to wipe your install and start again. This is what I do with my installs; if it breaks wipe it.
That's funny because Apple has a very pleasing OS upgrade experience. Even better, the machine upgrade experience was amazing to me when I bought a new macbook and was able to migrate installed applications and settings from the old machine seamlessly. Doing something like that on windows or linux is still a pain.