Could you describe in detail how this works? It sounds like TM has built-in support for using this to roll back the OS. I’ve never heard of that or thought of it.
I can imagine there’s all kinds of pitfalls there as @alvarnell points out, but if Apple has specifically built such functionality into TM I would also imagine they’ve given these potential issues some thought. Any added detail would be much appreciated.
Yes, Al, I tend to agree. I’ve held off. I think I’ll be cloning, reformatting, installing Mojave and then restoring by hand each app as needed and my documents from the clone and various cloud services.
Simon. Here is a link for an Apple support article.
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/revert-to-a-previous-macos-version-mh15216/mac
I haven’t used my MacBookPro very often as it was purchased for travel and meetings. Now with Zoom meetings during quarantine, and my kids wanting to do Skype visits, I use the laptop more often. Yesterday it again pestered me to upgrade to Catalina, but I’m putting it off until I hear way better news.
Thanks, @danaeugene. I’m familiar with that procedure. I guess I just didn’t get that that’s what @shastaphil was pointing out. I read his post as describing some method to roll back OS version from within the TM interface. Obviously I should drink more coffee before I read posts here. 
You can turn off the pestering if you like.
Today, there’s one last step Apple Support want me to try before sending it in to them. I think I’ll be downgrading to Mojave instead of that shipping it off however.
I’ve had many if not all of these problems when I was wrestling with a failing hard drive on an older iMac. Actually it was a fusion drive, and it was a mess, causing me huge problems and trips to the Apple store with reinstalls, start from scratch, rebuilds etc.
I’m not saying it’s not Catalina, but I have a fairly complex setup and run Catalina on my iMac with no known problems. Not on my laptop because of a few apps there I need the older system for.
@tommy: if you reinstalled your Mac with TimeMachine your likely reimported your problem.
The problem with Catalina are the inconsistent problems. I had one customer of my software last week who couldn’t access the Application Support folder for one app. For the second app everything worked fine. Similar problems come up again and again in our development forum.
I installed an app. Catalina told me that it had a keylogger. WTF?
The security is simply crazy. Before Catalina you only had failure with AppTranslocation (“Why aren’t my plugin loaded?”) and now you have worse stupidity with your own files.
@beatrixwillius I suspect you are right. Am considering a reformat, a reinstall of the OS, a restore of my cloud based documents, and then adding apps back in as needed.
Trouble is my rather complex setup has me worried that I’ll be leaving something out. And the time, finding the time.
Yes, that’s what I would recommend. And say no to cloud based documents.
I just skimmed this thread here (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/constant-kernel-panics-userspace-watchdog-timeout-no-successful-checkins-from-com-apple-windowserver.2222878/page-10). The problem seems to be graphics/power one. So reinstalling is not likely to help. The thread recommends changing some graphics/power settings.
I installed Catalina soon after release on my 2018 MacBook Air, and had the problem of it apparently getting stuck part way through installation (something that was supposedly fixed in the next point update). I have a feeling that it stuck while (or before) migrating the Messages database (I force-restarted it I think), as this app is still not working properly despite much (maybe too much) fiddling around & the fact that I use messages in the cloud.
I also get very frequent crashes of Mail, sometimes multiple times a day.
It seems that Catalina its on its way to being Apple’s Vista 10. I can see many users waiting for the next MacOS to upgrade and skipping this one altogether.
JC
That’s my plan. Don’t see the benefit and wary of the headaches. Late 2015 iMac working fine with Mojave. In fact Catalina will keep me from buying a new Mac for myself or my wife who is Rube Goldberging her MacBook Pro with dead internal keyboard/trackpad by using wireless external keyboard and mouse, at least until the next OS, hopefully more stable, is released.
I’ve set that, thank you, one spot I hadn’t considered checking Macrumors. Quite a few threads indicating external monitors are part of the issue and the panics happen after the mac sleeps.
Why should waiting for the next MacOS imply that long standing issues will be fixed? We’ve gone through multiple upgrades of Catalina without the Mail problems (and other things) being addressed, fixed, or acknowledged. There’s little reason to think that will change, IMO.
Dana, nobody said that the next MacOS is going to fix all the long standing Catalina issues. But Apple, or anybody else for that matter, doesn’t need to be that clever to realize that if a lot of their users skip a mayor OS, they better come back with something really good next time (even Microsoft did that). So I expect no less than that from Apple.
Catalina doesn’t have any new features that are a must have that will force even a power user (like myself) to upgrade. I’m on Mojave on six machines, all my pro apps, plugins, etc. are 64 bits, so I could easily upgrade to Catalina, but I’ve tested Catalina and I don’t see any advantages. All I’ve seen is problems with backing up to our network RAID deployment and connecting to a FMS 18 database. So I’d rather wait and see what Apple comes up with in the next mayor OS upgrade.
I’ve skipped other MacOS’s before (not as buggy as Catalina is right now), with no harm whatsoever…and every time I did Apple came back strong. I expect nothing but that from Apple.
JC
Disclaimer - I’ve been an Apple fan for the last 20 years or more 
I’m still on Mojave, and at this point am planning to stay here until whatever comes next is out and through the first couple of versions.
From what I’ve seen over the past several versions of MacOS, new versions seem to trigger problems for people whose configurations differ from what Apple expects and tests for. The longer you’ve been using Macs, the more old software, old hardware, old documents, and old habits you accumulate, and Apple fails to accommodate to that reality. They’re more interested in the iOS market because iPhones are bought more often (and last for a shorter time) than Macs, which makes more money for Apple.
If you prevent the Mac from sleeping when display is off, then obviously you are not going to experience the bug with macOS randomly ejecting external drives when the Mac (not the display) is asleep. Which is what’s happening. But it happened to me already with Sierra, High Sierra and Mojave on a 2013 Mac Pro with Thunderbolt 2 drives, so it’s not new in Catalina. That said, it’s definitely not fixed in Catalina. I had it happen on a new Mac with Thunderbolt 3 drives. Like you, I now prevent the Mac from sleeping when display is off. I guess Apple only cares about saving power and energy (and helping the environment) on paper, and they don’t really care about fixing the bugs that prevent us from putting our devices to sleep in the first place.