

or do they often fail and vanish?
No. Niche, hipster, “latest hotness” distros sometimes vanish. Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Kali, Qubes, Mint are all examples of community maintained distros that have been around for a long time.
Since you’re looking for “stability” highly recommend Mint.

Who are the morally bankrupt execs who wrote this? I want names.