I agree with @holch.

Very few people tested the release candidates.
And the procedure was the same in the previous versions (2.50/2.73, 3.x) The first releases still had bugs. (as you saw in this old thread you found about version 2.53, which also was an early release of that branch)

I see another problem.
Well, you have this issue. Nobody else shouted #MeToo. Nor do I.
So maybe this issue is very rare and difficult to reproduce.
And only if you can reproduce it, you can fix it easily.

And to this:

So I have encountered a three year old bug which is still awaiting a fix

Not at all. You found a thread about a bug in version 2.53 and 2.54.4, which was fixed in 2.54.5



In my opinion it is still the best to install the LTS of 3.x. for production, and the 4.x to test and report bugs.

Joffm

Now I agree with Joffm.

I personally would consider 3.x LTS as stable as well.