Opinon please - Host refuses to install a later version than 4.2.3 - says they're too buggy.

Ok, I recently upgraded to 4.2.3 or rather my hosts did. However, I'm now getting some mySQL crashes (we upgraded to mySQL 4 at the same time) which didn't happen on 4.1.6 and also phpMyAdmin is reporting a bug with strings in 4.2.3 and advises upgrading. The problem is the hosts refuse to upgrade to anything after 4.2.3 as 4.2.3 is the only one packaged up with Debian (the OS used on the server) and anything over 4.2.3 is too buggy to install, in particular 4.3.2 has quote "In particular there are severe memory and semaphore issues with 4.3.2 that make it almost unusable in a production environment." If that's the case, why hasn't 4.3.2 been fixed since late May? Or is my hosting company just making up excuses? I would like to get away from 4.2.3, just wondering what people's thoughts on the current version of php are. Thanks & Regards Steve Childs,