Immutable distros like Fedora Silverblue, Kinoite, etc don't let you modify the base system at all, and always let you roll back in case an update broke something. They're probably the most reliable Linux systems available today.

I might like punishment, but I don’t mind a completely fresh install every once in a while.

The only way to not go insane is to keep notes about what you like to change, why, and how. That way you can get up and running with a fresh system quickly. No need for snapshots and the like.

Some people say that I like to do things the hard way, however.

One (popular) option is using a filesystem that supports snapshots (IE. BTRFS, or maybe XFS). You can set up your system to take snapshots pre-and post-update snapshots, or manually, or on a regularly scheduled basis.

If you use GRUB as your bootloader, you can boot into a stored snapshot if something gets borked. You can also recover deleted files from previous snapshots.