the general perception that rolling distros are annoying since they might break sometimes, with the reality that non rolling distros definitely break shit when upgrading versions.

Personally, I still prefer the non-rolling distros.

A rolling distro might break on any update, and you never know when.

But for non-rolling, you can wait until you have available time to deal with any issues. Sure there will be issues and things that need reconfiguring -- you basically just reinstalled your whole OS. But you can choose when and if that happens, so you can schedule it for a convenient time when you've got time and energy to work on it if necessary.

(And, personally, I wouldn't do the dist-upgrade thing at all. I just download the newest LTS version and install it as a fresh install, then port everything important over from backups. Nice fresh start with no old baggage hanging around. Often, I'd do that at the same time as a major hardware upgrade as well, so it's basically a new PC.)