LDOs, or low-dropout linear regulators, come in various types, but it can be difficult to distinguish them, and to the novice engineer, this regulator is often made to seem deceptively simple.
Some LDOs didn't care about the ESR of the output capacitor (used with film capacitors). Later they were common with electrolytic output capacitors with some ESR and did not work well with ceramic capacitors (MLCC). And now it seems to be common for them to be perfectly stable with MLCCs but have a maximum ESR requirement of a few Ohms.
My understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that this difference must be due to differences in their control functions, that instability is caused by insufficient phase margin, and that this instability should be countered by introducing one or more zeros to the control function (adding ESR to Cout and/or feed-forward capacitance across R1 in the control loop).
But I'm missing the bigger picture as to what the differences are with regards to their build and regulation schemes, how to spot the different types, other than look for the ESR requirements, and what other factors, related to build and regulation scheme, might be prudent to consider when choosing an LDO.
Can someone provide me with a good overview?