ndiswrapper was the main cause back in the day, shockingly giving Windows drivers access to the Linux kernel can cause problems. The most recent time was when VDPAU was new and I was trying to get HD video playback working on a mini-PC with an nVidia Ion GPU by running a version of the nVidia driver much newer than Ubuntu packaged. Now that I think about it that must have been around a full decade ago.
There were rough patches along the way but, all distros were having the same problem in someway or another (vdpau, fglrx, multi-gpu support, ndiswrapper & wireless stuff, etc.) but it's a set it and forget it affair for a very very long time.
...and obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/963/
The only two major distributions that I used for a sufficient amount of time are Ubuntu and Arch. Arch "unstableness" is exactly what I want most of the time on my personal computer as it's my to-go Petri dish. "Stability" would mean that it's harder for me to break it apart, and make a Frankenstein out of it. That's exactly what I have been experiencing with Ubuntu LTS releases --- stability.
Most of the time, I want to have all the available LLVM versions alongside with all the GCC versions, with all the available binutils (Qemu, Docker, Oracle VBox, etc.) versions on the latest kernel full of my monkey patched printk's. When I finally get to break its back I dive the Wiki for few hours to restore it.
I can imagine a non-office, hacking desktop OS that follows the Arch packaging strategy being highly successful.
I also maintain a few compute servers for 10-20 people. They are on Ubuntu LTS. The packages that I need there are always the ones that just work and don't let anyone do anything "cutting edge".
Arch is rolling release and you take the good with the bad. The ones who try to defend arch as some paragon of stability miss the point that Arch's model is inherently unstable, but it comes with other benefits.
I'm the one who kicked off this entire conversation pointing out that arch is unstable, and it cracks me up watching silly people scramble to try and defend Arch as being some paragon of stability.
No, it's not. That's baked into its identity.
I also agree that you shouldn't run your production database on Arch Linux. It isn't made for workloads like that. But personally I find maintaining Arch Linux+"custom packages"(with AUR) easier then Debian+"latest packages"+"custom packages".
Back here in reality, rolling release is less stable because more bugs in the software get through. And this is a reasonable expectation and not some magical fairyland where bugs never get written so being right up against the dev branch is as stable as being on the stable branch.
We really live in two different software worlds. Every software I'm using has its number of bugs a purely decreasing function of time, especially in the "main" paths and use cases.
If it were true, it means there wouldn't be bugs in the first place because they wouldn't have gotten written. The very fact that the bugs got written implies new bugs can, and will, be introduced.