I just have to say, after having booted into Windows, that Linux is so much nicer than Windows when it comes to doing system “updates.”
So, here I am, sitting in my chair for about 20 minutes looking at a mostly black screen and a highly dubious looking percentage number going up very slowly. It tells me that Windows is “updating” and that I should keep the computer turned on. Good thing I have the computer turned on or I wouldn’t know that I shouldn’t have it turned off, right?
Anyway, I start to think about how this experience goes in Linux. In my experience, I do “system” updates about once a month, and I can see each individual package being installed (if I glance away from my browser session, that is). In Windows, I have no choice but to sit here and wonder if the system will even work again.
Windows decides that it wants to update drivers, apparently (I honestly have no idea what it’s doing, which is part of what pisses me off), because it reboots the computer. Then it reboots again. Then, eventually, everything goes back to the familiar Windows desktop. WTF?
How anyone could prefer Windows to Linux is truly a mystery to me.
I doubt most people would base their decision solely on the update experience.
That being said when I used Windows regularly up to the end of last year, installing updates wasn’t really a problem or even something I really noticed. It didn’t really nag me to restart or whatever and just did its thing when I shut the computer down, taking half a minute longer every now and then - but I don’t care because I just wanted to shut down anyway.
Fedora (and I’m sure more distros) apply updates on restart by default if you update via GUI (“Software” in GNOME, “Discover” in KDE). This also requires a “double restart” (I noticed it because you also have to enter your LUKS passphrase twice). Sure, you can update packages in-place, but depending on the update (not just the kernel) this can cause issues/anomalies with the running system. I’ve had some Mesa updates without a restart cause games to stop working or misbehave, also video decoding.