Yes, the majority of users should stick to the M releases from here on. That is why we created them. You can still play with nightlies but don't expect them to be perfect anymore.
Sent from my Nexus 10 using Tapatalk HD
i tend to think the Nexus devices get pretty good support. I follow Mako development, but N10 and my Nexus S just get random nightlies dumped on. They run stable as hell. Sure I can go dig and find a bug here and there if I knew what was going on, but unless I was looking for it I'd probably not run into any.
Yes for the casual user who doesn't know what's going on maybe an M release is better, but my point regarding Nexus devices remain. And even then I dump a random CM 10.1 nightly on my SGS2. I can see the imperfections in that device and plenty of stability issues, but that's what happens with non Nexus devices where devs need to throw in hours of hackery. I would say the same probably applies for a device like the HP TouchPad that you managed. Had there been official nightly builds from the start, it'd probably be bugged as hell as you guys were trying to get things to work here and there. On my N4 though, I have been running CM from nightly #1. There have only been a few problems here and there like the GPS issue which caused reboots and the dropped data from the msm_hsic wakelock fixes. I think as long as you follow development, you should know what's coming up, and even then, it's only one or two nightlies every once in a while that cause instability issues.
That said this is all a YMMV and use at your own risk. If you're a newb and something breaks, you should've prepared yourself.