"Yes, it's a rolling release, so you have to update your system now and then, but this is a good thing--install once and run an up-to-date system for years on end."
In my experience, this also lets the system collect all kinds of cruft over time, which can definitely impact stability and predictability when it comes to updates, unless you're extremely vigilant about housekeeping.
Put off updating for a couple of weeks because you're got better things to do? You may end up borking your system unwittingly.
Not subscribed to the Arch news feed and intimately familiar with the packages installed on your system? You may end up borking your system unwittingly.
Arch is good for dedicated power users, who want to tinker around. But most of us just want to get stuff done, not mess with the OS.
Stop perpetuating this myth that you have to mess around and tinker to keep Arch in working condition. It's one update command, and it's not something you need to do daily. You can put it off for weeks, all that will happen is you'll have a bigger download.
I use Arch exactly because I want to get shit done. My way.
I ran Arch for ~9 years, and there were several cases of OS/boot-breaking updates, requiring me to boot from a USB stick and manually fix things when the updates decided to shit all over the system. Having to manually cross-reference an update list with a list of "oh damn, you need to do these manual steps or you'll break everything" errata from the Arch news feed is not my idea of a good time.
The only reason the Arch forums are so informative, is because people run into stupid issues on a regular basis.
Mint updates itself and gets out of my way. That makes it ideal for actually getting shit done.
Mint packages tend to be quite old, even older than Ubuntu. This is no good if you want to run close to, or, upstream versions, which Arch excels at. Of course, you can install software not using your package manager, but that defeats the point of having centralized package management in the first place and can cause problems.
I used to think I wanted the very latest version of every single application, not matter what.
These days, only Chrome, Spotify, Qbittorrent and a couple of others are the newest versions (through PPAs), everything else is just stock and works perfectly fine.
Sorry, but that is exactly my experience. Over and over. Arch breaking every couple of weeks in a time consuming way. Maybe your setup is so minimal that you aren't affected? For me it was "oh my, what's broken now again?". This really hurts, if you're a freelancer and time is your own money and not your employer's.
In my experience, this also lets the system collect all kinds of cruft over time, which can definitely impact stability and predictability when it comes to updates, unless you're extremely vigilant about housekeeping.