HFW is OFW, it doesn't black screen any more than OFW does.
Of course if you use HEN with it, customise the OS & use homebrew, that's a different story altogether. If you mod HFW, it's no longer HFW.
It's also important to realise that all homebrews & customised OS files were specifically written & tested for CFW, not for HEN's limited jailbreak. When used on HEN, which was never intended as their target environment, some of them are bound to have a few issues here & there because a feature they use isn't supported by HEN, it's unavoidable.
Most PS3 homebrew projects are no longer maintained & there would be little point in making too many HEN specific changes in existing homebrew either because HEN is likely to be superseded in the not so distant future.
Regarding Ferrox, well there was a time where Ferrox was a reference for minimal standard CEX CFW, it was considered to be one of the most stable CFW available.
Then Ferrox maintenance changed hands & more emphasis was put on Cobra Ferrox along with add ons than on keeping Ferrox as reference for CFW with minimal patching.
But the more features you add, the more changes you make, the more likely the conflicts & problems. Modern Ferrox CFWs might be done a bit too quickly, with too little testing.
As to Rebug releases, since Joonie took over the maintenance back in the days of 4.4x/4.5x, Rebug CFWs have been pretty stable. Joonie is a meticulous person who likes to be sure about the stuff he releases, he spends the necessary time to test all features until he is satisfied. Rebug being a complex assemblage of many files, some that are not even supposed to run together, it requires rigorous testing.
Additionally, Joonie has had a talented dev to help him solve many problems over the years & he learned from it, habib took over the Cobra development & maintenance for Rebug, which de facto made him the main Cobra contributor too.