I was running Ubuntu 14.04 on a small PC with XBMC and proprietary Nvidia drivers. The standard `apt-get update` would never rebuild the nvidia drivers so inevitably on reboot, X couldn't start and I had to figure out why, then rebuild the nvidia drivers manually, and try again.
I'm much more scared of Ubuntu aptitude updates than I am of Microsoft updates.
Win10 broke safe mode, it can be re-enabled, but still... Reboot into safe more, or via recovery disk... restore the to restore point set before updates, reboot.
Most updates in Ubuntu can be recovered from. That doesn't make it better/easier than recovery in Windows... as it depends on what got updated, how it got updated, and what all came with it.
I'm much more scared of Ubuntu aptitude updates than I am of Microsoft updates.