Linux Mint has addressed this specifically. They enabled auto-updates in 20.1 only after they launched and tested Timeshift, which is a backup tool that enables

Linux Mint has addressed this specifically. They enabled auto-updates in 20.1 only after they launched and tested Timeshift, which is a backup tool that enables you to boot into a past snapshot of the system much like FreeBSD's snapshots. It's geared mainly towards btrfs however, as ext4 doesn't support snapshots. And to be fair, updates broke my Windows systems multiple times in the past as well. This isn't really a problem by itself since errors and mistakes happen, the problem is that the state of recovery tools in both systems is somewhat lacking. Linux can be repaired from Live USB and has Timeshift, but it doesn't have an easily accessible built-in rescue environment that's actually useful. Windows has DaRT, but all decent Live USB's for it are third-party and it's very hard to repair its internals if the existing tools don't work. FreeBSD is probably the closest to being bulletproof, but it has its own problems.