Comment by ASalazarMX
5 years ago
Probably to deal with corruption from people applying library updates and not restarting their programs because they keep running fine in memory. I have no idea how many bug reports could be ascribed to this, but if we want a user-friendly Linux we have to put up with the safer update process. It's not lengthy at all, wait less than one minute and you're set.
NixOS and GuixSD aren't user friendly because the people who use them are like GNU/Linux users circa 2000: people insane enough to install an operating system that is very particular about who its friends are.
But they do have an excellent solution to the whole updates debacle: Install them in a separate location, initialise them when booting or when they're finished installing, and delete them when they're inaccessible from a few standard locations like /boot or /proc.