This is the case for most Linux distributions, except for LTS and rolling release, and the latter isn't newbie friendly, which leaves the only good experience newcomers have with Linux are the LTS releases with increasingly outdated userspace apps. I hope immutable distributions take off, which will make major upgrades easier and pristine rollback easy. The Linux space really needs a newbie friendly, immutable distro. I know of Vanilla OS, OpenSUSE Aeon & Fedora Silverblue... hope we get more competition.

As an anecdote, I've been upgrading a single install of Fedora stable for years without any issues.

Same here. I love that aspect of Fedora. My main desktop has been upgraded-in-place for 8 or so years now.

I’ve been using Linux and BSD for twenty years and never ran an OS I couldn’t update to the next release, with the exception of elementary. Some make it easy and some don’t but elementary OS was the only one to say “sorry, no upgrade path for you.”