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I like using apt-get install for my packages. However, I discovered that the repositories for apt-get is rarely updated after release. For example, when trying to install nodejs and npm today, I discovered that the repository still had version 0.10.29 and 1.3 respectively, while in reality they are at version 5.3 and 3.5.2 at the moment of this post.

So I'm wondering if there are any repositories for apt-get that are constantly updated with the latest stable release of packages? If yes, how do I set up apt-get to use those repositories? If no, are there other package managers/linux distributions that would suit my purposes better?

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NodeJS and NPM are not representative of typical packages.
Node JS uses the semantic versioning system for identifying releases. Under this system the 0 "major" number in 0.10.29 indicates that it is a new project undergoing a rapid rate of development,i.e. from the semantic versioning docs

Major version zero (0.y.z) is for initial development. Anything may change at any time. The public API should not be considered stable.

The NodeJS version 0.10.29 came out mid last year and so it is not that old in terms of time, although in the case of this particular package alot of changes have occurred in that period, so for that reason I use a PPA for installing newer versions of node and NPM - but its not accurate to say Ubuntu packages are rarely updated based on what you have seen with NodeJs.

Depending on how "cutting edge" you want to be you may find the official Ubuntu repositories don't have the newest versions of the programs you want, its typically pretty trivial to find a PPA hosting packages with newer version, and if you are willing to do the work and deal with the technical difficulties open source packages can be compiled and installed from source.

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