Yeah, I understand, and I really plan to move to testing once I get a new machine. But till then this is the way I guess. Thanks!
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The real answer is @Strit 's one and therefore I’ve marked that as an answer, but you can help yourself a lot by:
-
Keeping at least 2 LTS kernels on your system and boot the latest one unless you run into trouble there and then you boot the previous one…
-
use
pamac upgradefrom a command-line to upgrade. -
Ensure
grubis showing while booting:-
Execute:
sudo nano --backup /etc/default/grub -
Change (or add?) the following 3 lines:
GRUB_TIMEOUT=3 #GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0 #GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=hidden(3 or higher is fine, add the # before the lines above if those lines are present)
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Ctrl+X Y Enter to save if there is anything to save
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If you did save, execute:
sudo update-grub -
Reboot
-
-
Read the Announcements
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Read the list of modules/applications/libraries that are going to be updated before you press Y
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Read the
/var/log/pacman.logafter updating and follow instructions (especially.pacnewinstructions) -
And for heaven’s sake:
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As a user of Manjaro since 2017, I still consider myself to be a “noob”, and I insist upon the fact that I’m not a contributer. I’m sorry to hear that you have encountered problems with the past few updates. As to “Stable” Branch being “press and forget” I would say “Yay” and “Nay” on that one. As I write I’m updating by the way, and I read the release announce and users comments prior to…it helps when you come across something niggly IMO. So, no blind faith, but measured assurance basically. The Wiki is a good idea as well, notwithstanding the Forum and its members - asked nicely you’ll always find some sort of help 
Semper fi 
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of course you free to try. we’ll love to hear how that goes, if you are having issues with you entitlement here.
seriously, there is a reason why there are rolling release distros as opposed to point release distros. you cannot have same expectations from both. if you expect fire and forget “update” button, then you dont belong here, go install ubuntu
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I haven’t had any major issues with Manjaro.I started out on the stable branch then switched to testing and now the unstable branch.I have learned to check the forum before doing and major updates to see if there are issues and if there are usually someone has already posted a fix.My main problem is when there’s an update like a new kernel or nvidia driver I have to have it now I can’t wait and yep sometimes I break something.Manjaro is a rolling release so there are times when something isn’t going to go right somewhere.So far and I don’t see it changing anytime soon I’m happy with Manjaro and all the work that goes into trying to please everyone all the time with any and every program driver and app we all expect to just work.
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Messages are not in order they were initially.
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I’ve been on testing for about 8 months and I’ve not had a single update that has made my machine unbootable/completely unusable. I’m not telling you to switch branches but it is not as perilous as you are making out.
There’s a script in the repos that makes a timeshift backup anytime you update. If you have an update that gives you issues you can easily restore a backup until its fixed.
In manjaros defence there are so many DE’s supported and such a plethora of different hardware its almost impossible for the team to catch every bug
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why is that important?
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If you know about grub's Shift magic, it’s not…
If you have no clue what I’m talking about: That’s why!
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care to explain? 
i don’t know about grub's Shift magic.
also what’s the difference between sudo update grub and sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg ? or they’re not related?
This is the content of my /usr/bin/update-grub file:
#! /bin/sh
set -e
exec grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg "$@"
“…In manjaros defence there are so many DE’s supported and such a plethora of different hardware its almost impossible for the team to catch every bug…”
And, yet, it does a pretty good job and crossies plenty of tee’s.
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Yes I understand it now, holding Manjaro, a project maintained and tested by the community to the same standards as Win or Ubuntu( under Canonical) or Fedora(RH) isn’t fair. But still wish the world for Manjaro and would love to contribute to it.
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This is a good point, mostly I see others, not the manjaro team, promote manjaro as user-friendly but I can’t find any ‘if you are new to linux start with manjaro’ article on the manjaro site. It does mention simplicity in the sense that is there is some help to get started quickly and there is a streamlined sane defaults approach to everything. As arch is user-centric this flows over to manjaro, as the user of the system the user is choosing to run it, maintain it and be its caretaker.
The Manjaro team do an excellent job of easing the installation and maintenance but the tool must fit the user and their interests.
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This is quite true as well. Manjaro is NOT a beginner friendly distro such as, for example, Linux Mint LTS, which I started out on myself over several months before trying out other distros.
However, it IS user friendly there’s no doubt about that. And, yes. The user is in command, and of a rolling release at that, which does augment the risks of little snags from time to time. You have to accept to take the rough with the smooth. In general, it’s rather rare though. Just my 2 cents.
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I understand what you are saying, although I have not had any problems. I also see that you’ve been really polite about it.
It’s hard to complain though. I mean they do it for free AND they don’t force you to agree to any corporate bullshit to run their distro (no EULA crap). I love Manjaro and I actually donated quite a bit of money to them as I felt bad about taking something so good for free. I’d still feel awkward about complaining though.
Just a comment on the stable assumption - actually I have ranted on this before simply because IMO users has to high expectations to something that is gratis and free both for download, testing and continued use.
A stable update does rarely break provide the system is a default system.
The Manjaro team works hard to ensure that updates works with the least amount of problems - but as You all know - as we all know - most users does not stay very long on a default system.
A lot of users has special requirements or even like to tinker with the system and the Manjaro team cannot possibly take into account every single possible configuration or combination of applications.
This fact will cause incidencts - but the fact that you are using a boatload of software you haven’t paid a dime for and you are commenting in forum where each and everyone is using their free time.
What the Manjaro team does - and quite well in my opinion - is to provide an abstraction to the manual tasks needed when you install a system from scratch and providing some very good default configuration OOB.
The term fiendly is a misnomer - a term so abused by users which expect a free system - as in no-payment required, as in no subscription services required, as in no developer revenue - should behave like macOS or Windows.
If you know nothing about Linux then Manjaro is very friendly compared to what you need to know on how to put an Archlinux system together.
You cannot expect environments like Gnome and KDE - which is under heavy development and known for their 
updates which consequently breaks extensions and customizations done by the end user.
The Manjaro team works hard to iron out such issues months before they snap e.g. Gnome 40 to stable branch. Just search for gnome 40 and see how much work there has gone into the Manjaro Gnome edition.
I am closing this thread for further comments - before it goes completely off the rails.
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