So coming from other Linux distros, most of them don't require the user to restart the computer to install new software updates. I've only seen this feature on Fedora and Neon. However, I've never encountered or heard someone having an issue with installing updates while the system is still on. KDE recommends to keep this feature on, but I wanted to ask why is it recommended to restart the computer for every software update and whether or not users on this forum have this feature left on.

In fact reboot is required in some scenarios. For example, some library your init system depends on is updated. In order to load newer version of that library easiest way is to reboot. Same goes for kernel.

Though, I have noticed as well that Gnome software is reboot happy and prompts for reboot quite often, even when service restart would resolve a need to reboot, but I guess that’s the limitation of the GUI; how to present package upgrades and need to restart some specific service.

Saying restart service would confuse many, mainly new or unexperienced users.

For those wanting to look under the hood, you can always open up a terminal and issue

needs-restarting

Which would show you which processes need to be restarted.

Bear in mind above said, if process requiring restart is init or something like that, it is just easier to reboot. routerlogin

Thank you for the insightful info.
I understand why the system needs to restart to update services and important core-system modules. But as far as I've seen it, Neon restarts on every update attempt. Even if you try to update a very tiny application, Neon will prompt the user to restart to install the update. That's why it puzzled me. I don't think updating a dictionary app really requires the whole system to reboot
But maybe due to this excessive restarts, the OS and the packages are very stable.

Hello,

I think the need to reboot after an update should only cover system (Kernel, GPU drivers, System libraries etc.) updates. For example; I can't understand why I have to restart my system after updating my torrent client.