This is really the way to do it. No one ever complains about Mac OS being unstable because an update breaks their install on a no-name generic laptop. Instead

This is really the way to do it. No one ever complains about Mac OS being unstable because an update breaks their install on a no-name generic laptop. Instead, they run it on hardware that Mac OS supports. Same should be the case for Linux. For example Lenovo maintains a list of support laptop versions, and which Linux distros are certified on them. I believe Dell and HP have something similar. Just stick to the supported hardware/distro combos (well, you can typically run whatever distro but at least you have a good baseline), then you should be fine.