[dale_glass]

Those are a pretty bad idea as well, and you see some distros like Fedora move away from them by introducing a reboot/update/reboot cycle.

Yes, on Linux you can replace binaries and libraries in use, but then you're not actually running the new code until you restart the program and are still vulnerable to any security issue that it fixed.

And with things like runtime loading of plugins that now may be incompatible, and programs not expecting stuff changing underneath, online updates can be troublesome.

The online model works well enough for a command line usage where applications are transient, or a server usage where you remember to restart a service or two. But for a desktop user with long lived, huge apps like a browser it's not that good of an idea anymore.

[holowoodman]

checkrestart does everything you need. And browsers like firefox display a helpful "restart me" button.

[pabs3]

checkrestart doesn't tell you to reboot after a microcode/kernel update, or restart a Python program after a module gets an update. needrestart is a better alternative to that.