I have found Mac OS X to be the most stable system I've ever used. But like any multitasking system of today, things can go wrong if you don't take care of it. Luckily, Mac OS X is very easy to maintain. Here are the things I do and use to keep my system functioning smoothly. I am currently using Panther, Mac OS 10.3.x.
Enable Journaling.
This should already be on by default. It will help keep your data safer in case of a crash or power outage. Also, by having your discs journaled, you no longer have to run fsck in Single User Mode as it is unnecessary. You get a slight performance hit (probably around 2 - 3% with 512 MB RAM), but you get added safety. Here is the Apple Support document on Journaling, Article ID: 107249.
Execute maintenance scripts.
These are the Daily, Weekly, and Monthly clean ups your Unix system needs to do to keep itself optimized. These routines run in the middle of the night though and will only run if your machine is on at that time. So, unless you constantly leave your machine running overnight, these routines will never get accomplished. There are many ways around this though. You could use some utilities (like OnyX, Cocktail, others) or you could use the command line to manually run them. Unfortunately, then it is up to you to remember to do this. One of my favorite apps is Macaroni, which does all this automatically. If is sees that the maintenance has not been done the night before, it will run it as soon as I am not using the computer for a while (doesn't want to do these tasks as I am trying to do something else). It works great, I never notice it, and my system is happy.
Fix your Permissions.
Over time, from installing more apps or some other writing of files, some of your Permissions will be incorrect. This could cause your system or certain apps to have problems like quitting or crashing. This is easy to fix. Just run the Disk Utility (found in your Utility folder) and choose to Fix Permissions on your discs. Now, if you use the wonderful Macaroni I mentioned already, you can tell it to Fix Permissions automatically for you. I have mine checked weekly.
Clean your Caches.
Your System and many apps keep Caches of information they might use again. Sometimes these Caches become corrupt and can then cause erratic behavior. Well, you can clean them from the command line, manually, or use a utility. I chose to use a utility. Again, I use OnyX, but there are others available like Cocktail or Cache Out X. Depending on which Caches you choose to clean, you might have to reboot your System. I clean mine out once a month.
So, that's about it. Enable Journaling, execute maintenance scripts, fix your Permissions, and clean your caches. None of this has to cost you a penny either if you are happy with using the command line and trusting your memory. I chose to use one shareware app (Macaroni) and one freeware app (OnyX) to make my life easier. Anyway, if you follow the suggestions above, your Mac should be more stable and you can be more productive.
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