Despite the warnings here, I’ve upgraded both my systems (2018 MacBook Pro and 2020 iMac) to Big Sur. The interface elements are a bit cartoony but I’ve encountered no serious bugs so far. The biggest thing I’ve had to deal with:
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The default desktop with its bright colors is not to my taste. Fortunately, Apple provides a photographic alternate dynamic desktop of the Big Sur Coast.
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I’ve had to modify the default toolbars extensively. Everything I want is now there, although I miss being able to use the area over sidebars for toolbar icons.
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The most annoying thing is that the system does not remember menubar icon positions for non-Apple items. So, on my desktop (where all the icons have comfortably fit, I’ve needed to reorganize it after any startup. Fortunately, since I’ve never been able to fit everything I want on my laptop menubar, I purchased Bartender some time ago. It is currently in beta for Big Sur but seems stable. I’ve now installed it on the desktop also. Note: I even paid the upgrade fee in advance. Bartender did notice that I previously purchased it and didn’t force me to search out my old license or invoice.
Note that I upgraded from Catalina. The only red flag issue I’ve seen raised is the initial inability to create a bootable clone. For myself, I regarded that as minor, as my typical way to restore a system has been to install a new system from scratch and then use Migration Assistant to move my data from a clone. Whether the clone is actually bootable is not an issue, and the latest news is that Apple supposedly has a fix that is being tested in the latest betas from Carbon Copy Cloner (my favorite clone creator).