Now look, that isn't true. While yes, the maintenance of your system is entirely up to you, you cannot help it when a bug comes from an update. Typically if you stay away from the git versions of software, you should be fine, but library updates break stuff all the time, all it takes is that one piece of software that you use to not be compatible with an update and you're out. Yes you could downgrade that package, but what if something else you uses requires that updated package? Then you're downgrading that. Next thing you know, 30 libraries have to be downgraded because they changed the way their syscalls work and that software cannot make use of the libraries the way they are.

I prefer using arch and I don't have any problem doing any of this stuff (I approach software the suckless way save for a file manager), but I can see why a lot of people look elsewhere for their distro of choice.

Meh, kinda depends. Most issues I've had with Arch are related to bugs with apps rather than system breakage (looking at you early Plasma). Overall Arch is stable and issues are resolved quickly, though sometimes you may need to avoid major software releases for a while.

Lived on gentoo for a decade with less problems than I had on arch.