[flukus]

IME this isn't really true on desktop machines. I've had a few crashes/issues over the years:

* Trying to open a KDE app halfway through a KDE upgrade - crash.

* Trying to open a new tab in firefox after an update - crash.

* Updating an arch system - sound broke when rebooted, that was a frustrating holiday.

I usually reboot after an update if I see anything big like KDE/firefox/gnome/system being updated just in case.

[Spivak]

Which is why the Red Hat and friends crowd is pushing for true offline updates for desktop systems. I'm using it on Fedora right now and it works surprisingly well. The UI is quite ugly since it's basically just PackageKit fighting with systemd over the tty output but it works.