My most recent example with EndeavorOS was trying out KDE which I thought looked really smart on the desktop. Then it started glitching. Arch tends to be bleeding edge so that makes sense. But it meant I had to make a new choice of distribution or DE.

But Debian based Ubuntu? On Virtualbox? That seems a bit off. Maybe LTS would provide the stability you need.

I guess because development is decentralised, that you end up with developers working on different packages and when they update one it has a ripple effect on other packages.