Linux (specifically ubuntu in my case) also suffers from somewhat similar problems. Every time I update graphic drivers it's a diceroll on whether it will reboot into a black screen.
Sometimes it's recoverable from blindly pasting god-knows-what from stackoverflow. Most of the time I just have to do a complete reinstall.
(I guess it's not a complete brick on update because I have never suffered data loss, but it's similarly infuriating)
That seems like either a Ubuntu misconfiguration or buggy drivers when interacting with your hardware, but I certainly wouldn't say it's a "Linux" thing, may be a disto thing, Ubuntu's not known for caring much about the desktop these days. I have been using Linux successfully for more than a decade without such issues, which does not mean it didn't happen to you, but it does mean it's anecdotal. I am on a rolling-release disto, which updates much more frequently than Ubuntu does and yet, I've been able to continually upgrade a single install for the past 3 years without issue.
It's also nowhere near as bad as actually loosing data, as you mentioned.
I have also been using linux for over a decade and I still can't recommend it to any non-developers friends unless their hardware build is extremely common.
I am currently running two nvidia gtx 1080 SLI and multiple 4k monitors. Even for just installing the OS, I need to physically remove both graphic cards and use a smaller monitor first. This physically laborious workaround just to reinstall the damn thing is what amplified my rage when it decided to break on autoupdate.
Sometimes it's recoverable from blindly pasting god-knows-what from stackoverflow. Most of the time I just have to do a complete reinstall.
(I guess it's not a complete brick on update because I have never suffered data loss, but it's similarly infuriating)