Arch Linux

I'd say because of the frequent updates, you've simply not run into a bunch of issues that you would have otherwise. Updates most often are a preventative measure, it's pretty rare, like you say, that you run into an issue and it then gets fixed. Because you just don't run into the issue in the first place.

I would say there's not really a difference in upgrading rarely or often. It may happen that if you update more rarely, an issue in the intermediate versions was present and already fixed, so you "skipped" having this problem. But in the end, whenever you update, the new version you get has the same chance to have an issue like the intermediate versions that you skipped. So you'd roughly end up with the same amount of issues if you only change the rarity.

However, a thing you can do is to not update when you're sure that everything is working, and update more often when you're waiting for a fix for something. That way, you increase the time period of everything working, and reduce the time period of something not working. This increases your average stability, but the drawback is that you also get security updates less often and thus you might be vulnerable to some attacks, possibly.

But also, you're talking about quite a specific issue, has this been reported properly? Most often, developers depend on user reports because they don't have the exact environment a user might have. So far, for very many projects, I've found that if you report a problem you at least get a response if not a faster fix. Is your problem properly reported at the correct places? Have you received no answer?