Which distros have that problem? I generally stick to arch or centos, neither of which has tried to kneecap me at login time. Of course, both are fairly manual for updates unless you set up cron jobs to schedule them for you.

I use Ubuntu, and I've never had that problem. It usually checks for updates at boot, but doesn't actually download them until you manually approve it.

Laptop computers and hard disks are a big source of frustration. Either one is a hassle but combined they become a mess.

With desktops, I can tell people that they are supposed to leave their computers on 24/7 but most normal people will use their laptop and shut the lid when done. That’s what they do with phones and iPads and that’s what they expect from their laptops.

That being said, I sincerely detest automatic reboots. It doesn’t affect me anymore because I have an ssd now but an operating system that reboots the computer without explicit approval from the user is trash. There is no excuse for this kind of nonsense.

I like Mozilla Firefox’s approach on my fedora machine. After I dnf update, Firefox refuses to open any more tabs until I close and open Firefox again. However, existing tabs continue working just fine and I can continue indefinitely before I close and open Firefox again. This is actual trust in computing. Trust your users to know best.

I'm currently using Kubuntu, and sometimes the jobs that run at bootup hang the login screen and even prevent the TTY gettys (i.e. ctrl-alt-f2) from starting at all. In those cases I alt-sysrq-u and reset. Haven't determined whether it's fstrim, unattended-upgrades, a search indexer, or something else, because alt-sysrq-t is disabled in Ubuntu kernels and I can't start a task manager if I can't log in.

It's pretty frustrating, but it's still slightly better than Windows.