Most complex software ships with a few bugs. Obviously, we want to avoid them, but the more complex a feature is, the harder it is to cover all the use-cases. As we get closer to our RC date, do we feel confident that what we're shipping has as few blocking bugs as possible? I would like to say we're close, but the truth is I have no idea. It feels like we'll have to keep trying the features for a bit until we don't run into anything - but we have less than 3 weeks before the RC ships. Here's a few surprising bugs that need to get fixed before I would feel comfortable shipping node12 in stable.

direnv would have to do too many releases to keep up with all the other project changes

And then think about if you want a rolling release, or a fixed release. Although all the distros you mentioned are on the fixed release side.

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

Canonical publishes new releases of Ubuntu on a regular cadence, enabling the community, businesses and developers to plan their roadmaps with the certainty of access to newer open source upstream capabilities.