Ubuntu strikes again

Over the years, I have installed various Linux distributions, starting with Slackware way back in '96 or so. Over the years, Ubuntu has come to prominence, so on several occasions, I have installed either Ubuntu or one of its derivatives. Every time, when updating or upgrading one package or another, something has gone terribly, terribly wrong, causing a major OS crash. Most recently, I installed Linux Mint because I got fed up with issues with Windows, and ran it fine for quite some time. Then the graphical update program could no longer fetch updates and I couldn't edit software sources or preferences, and then I noticed that I was disconnected from everything in pidgen, and couldn't reconnect no matter what I did. So I did something you should never have to do in Linux, I did a reboot. And it wouldn't complete a normal boot. So I got it to boot to a cli, did some messing around, and finally managed to get it to boot into a GUI, but I had to change desktop managers in order to do so, and everything is borked. I'm not sure if I should try to fix the issues with gdm, or if I should just install a different distro and regain my sanity...