Glitches like this are very infrequent if you run well chosen hardware. If you run e.g. an all-Intel setup which is a few months old, it's rare.
If you are afraid of things getting broken, simply use NixOS. All upgrades can be easily rolled back, and you can freeze updates of some packages, or get packages through different channels with different stability compromises. I prefer to get everything through rolling release channels, as then bugs come one by one.
I've been running Linux on a MacBook Air 11 2012 for years, and everything worked out of the box from day 1. For the record, that's a pure Intel machine with the exception of a Broadcom wireless card. Said card works equally bad in Linux and Mac, I don't get why Apple keeps sticking to this brand.
I was hoping to upgrade to one of the new 2020 Airs, which are again providing terrific value, a great screen and keyboard. Sadly, the T2 chip makes things a bit difficult. It's getting support for Linux, but there are still many glitches. My Mac was broken by some stupid inspector in my rental property, and it's sadly not so easy to find a decent replacement with all COVID restrictions.
Another option is the Surface line, which is surprisingly well supported. The Surface Go, for example, works incredibly well as a tablet. All recent Surface machines work quite well in Linux.
Else, your best bet is a ThinkPad or an XPS. Unfortunately, Chromebooks are no longer so easy to reflash.
The downside of NixOS is that developing on it is hell incarnate. And saying "you just have to learn the Nix way and use nix-shell" is not a satisfactory solution, take it from someone who has tried twice.
Moreover, I gave up on NixOS the second time around because an update completely hosed my system, including all my rollbacks. Something with XServer broke across all snapshots.
Ubuntu runs a certification program. I wish there was an independent party certifying hardware for Linux. And they looked into all the details, such as battery discharge triggering ACPI events, 802.11 functions supported by wireless card and things like that.
They’re also infrequent if you hold off on updating immediately after a release. Just wait for distro/package managers to check things and release it to you!
If you are afraid of things getting broken, simply use NixOS. All upgrades can be easily rolled back, and you can freeze updates of some packages, or get packages through different channels with different stability compromises. I prefer to get everything through rolling release channels, as then bugs come one by one.
I've been running Linux on a MacBook Air 11 2012 for years, and everything worked out of the box from day 1. For the record, that's a pure Intel machine with the exception of a Broadcom wireless card. Said card works equally bad in Linux and Mac, I don't get why Apple keeps sticking to this brand.
I was hoping to upgrade to one of the new 2020 Airs, which are again providing terrific value, a great screen and keyboard. Sadly, the T2 chip makes things a bit difficult. It's getting support for Linux, but there are still many glitches. My Mac was broken by some stupid inspector in my rental property, and it's sadly not so easy to find a decent replacement with all COVID restrictions.
Another option is the Surface line, which is surprisingly well supported. The Surface Go, for example, works incredibly well as a tablet. All recent Surface machines work quite well in Linux.
Else, your best bet is a ThinkPad or an XPS. Unfortunately, Chromebooks are no longer so easy to reflash.