> If you start pulling in many different components

But if you've made that choice, you will likely be more aware of what you're dealing with.

There are definitely valid reasons to go with big-upgrade-every-year-or-two kinds of distributions. It can make developing software that depends on other software easier, especially if you need binary compatibility. A book or article about that system won't be out-of-date immediately.

Personally I wouldn't mind a few spread-out glitches throughout the year compared to frantically trying to repair a broken system after a dist-upgrade and losing a weekend.

I have had a few glitches with arch, but I think they were mostly some manual intervention for signing keys and didn't harm the system.