I don’t use Linux too much, but this matches my experience… I have a raspberry pi 3, running a home automation server.
One day I go to upgrade a plugin for it. It tells me I need to upgrade the home automation server first, so I go do that. It fails because my Node.js install needs to be upgraded too, so I do that. Then, I try to upgrade the home automation server again, but that now fails with a strange error. Stack trace says something about a missing C++ lib in my Node.js install, so I look it up. I try to install the missing library, but it gives more errors. I do more searching and find loads of other people with this issue, my raspbian version can’t support this C++ library version without first being upgraded. Damn, well, it’s midnight and I have work in the morning, I don’t have time for that. I try to get my home automation server up so I can go to bed, but it fails due to problems with the Node.js install. Can’t go to bed without this server running or my smart home accessories don’t work. I try to downgrade to the previous Node.js version. This fails with another error. Couldn’t upgrade, now I can’t downgrade, I’m stuck. I read a thread on GitHub… other people are reinstalling the OS from scratch and starting over. Damn… I start trying to backup my config files so I can do this too. One more check of another post on GitHub and I find some guy shares a command to downgrade Node.js without a fresh OS install. Perfect! I run this, restart my home automation server, and go to bed. Maybe I’ll try to figure out this problem another day.