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this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2023
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Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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sigh... i hate to say it but do your updates via command line because it will actually tell you if you need a reboot. As said above, it should only be for Kernel updates, and even then it will tell you that it will switch kernels next reboot and keep running on the current one.
Most desktop applications for doing updates ask you to reboot not because its needed, but because they are being "safe" or not running with the same user rights as you are in the terminal.
Why does no other distro do that though? I've tried a bunch before and this is the first time I get that notification sitting there taunting me.
Hrm. Skim ahead if you already know some of this... So say you have a running program XYZ that loads libUseful.so to do useful things. Now you run some updates and libUseful.so gets replaced with the new version. Because of how files on Unix work, the old version still exists on the disk until XYZ closes it, but any new program will load the new version. So things generally "just work" when the system is updated in place, but on the rare occasion causes weird problems. Fedora (from the GUI) chooses to run updates during reboot to prevent the rare, weird problems. If you update from the command line, it just does them in place. Kernel updates always require a reboot to apply though.
It has been a while since I have used Fedora but this is not unique to that distro. Arch will also tell you to reboot if the kernel, systemd, and a few other packages are updated. I rarely do it right away though.
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After applying an update you need to make sure anything using the unmatched code is replaced by the patched code. A reliable way to do that is a reboot. Actually a reboot is pretty much the only reliable way to do that.
So I am not surprised that a distribution targeting end users asks for a reboot.