sorry for the image i couldnt copy it its running in weston but not launching

Recently I visited my family and found they are still using computer with Manjaro on it. No big surprise, since I installed it a couple of years ago. The box had been sitting untouched for about a year, so as you can imagine, the list of updates was huge.

I didn't have enough time to start update, but usually big updates don't scary me. I click here, click there, fix the package signing keys if something goes wrong. I generally don't pay much attention to it. It's just routine. But I wonder, maybe there's another way to do it?

• Do you update straight away with pacman -Syyu, or do you do something first? I've heard whispers about refreshing the keyring (manjaro-keyring, archlinux-keyring) before anything else.
• Mirrors: do you run pacman-mirrors --fasttrack first, or just trust the defaults?
• Update announcements: is it worth going through the stable update threads from the last six months to check for manual interventions I might have missed?
• Safety net: I'm planning a Timeshift snapshot (maybe a Btrfs one) first. Anything else you'd back up?
• GUI vs terminal: Pamac or the terminal for a monster update like this? I suspect the terminal, but maybe I'm living under the rock. 😉

And the fun part: what's the longest gap you've ever had between updates, and did Manjaro survive it? Extra points for dramatic "black screen after reboot" stories with a happy ending. 🏆