My hope would be that someday microsoft would realize how insanely primitive their update system is and switch to something more like yum or apt. It is downright painful to update a windows computer compared to just about any linux distro these dayI know what you mean. I actually think the package system (MSI) in Windows is pretty good, but there are some limitations of the OS and the user base that restrict what's feasible. For one thing, the surface area of changes that require reboots in Windows is higher than in Linux, even though there was a lot of improvement in this space in Windows 10.
Also, the Windows team is constrained by what I refer to as the "backwards compatibility straight-jacket". They have to carefully review and justify every breaking change, because each one will lead to unhappy customers and potential bad press. Heck, even non-breaking changes irritate some users (you know, those guys who are all still running Windows XP because *shudder* the icons are different in Windows 7).
Also, your average Linux user is just WAY more technically savvy than your average Windows user and can deal with stuff that would quickly overwhelm Microsoft with customer support calls were such a thing pushed out in Windows. For example, when I do an update of one of my Ubuntu systems, I may run into some package that's made a significant change to its config file format, and then I get an option to overwrite the old config or leave what's there in place and write the new config to a different name. Can you imagine how the average Windows user would react to this? Another example of that is with complex package dependencies. Most Windows users just couldn't deal with that, and so Microsoft has avoided going that route.
One area, though, that I think has just been horribly butchered in Windows is the whole device driver thing. There have been SO many breaking updates to that over the years, and I can tell you that even today, it is not a pleasant task to write a device driver. Linux seems to have that pretty well nailed down.
All of this is my opinion, and not necessarily the position of Microsoft.
Ya, gotta give you that. Linux users tend to be more likely to have an actual idea of how their computers actually work than your average windows user. However, that is no excuse for how utterly broken and primitive the windows update system is. Allow me to give you an example.
About a year or so ago I bought a copy of Win7 pro to run in a VM so I can do itunes for my phone. Really. That's it's primary purpose in life (itunes and phone backups-which you can't do in Linux to the best of my knowledge). So, I installed it in a VM, on what was essentially a bare-metal install. I'm not going to complain about the initial install process as compared to Linux (fedora, mint, or ubuntu), inasmuch as it is much more =needy= than the Linux install is. (my opinion).
OK, so, I the thing was installed, and I fired it up. (The initial user was assigned administrator privs. OMFG) Then I did the initial update. Cool, it went out, said you have BLAH many updates, do you want to do it? Ya, says I, update yourself please. It took a long time for that initial bunch of updates to download (ya, takes forever for the initial update of mint/fedora/whatever). Then it wanted me to reboot. OK. Fine, whatever. Reboot. I logged back in once it was back up. Then it says, "hey bro, you've got a bunch of crap you need to update, want me to do that?" Yeah. Download (again), update, (again), reboot (again), login, (again). Hey dude, you have a bunch of crap you need to update, do you want me to do that? (OK, let's try it again. Download (again, again), update (again, again), reboot, (again, again), login (again, again). After a few minutes, it says, once bloody again, you have some stuff you need to update. Want me to do that?
This process repeated at least four times. Possibly five. Can you possibly defend that?
Here's what I had to do when I installed Linux Mint in a VM. Install, answer some questions. Reboot. Login. (to a user that was NOT an administrator) After a little while, it tells me I have updates. I download, install then continue on with my work. I rebooted the VM that night just because I'm paranoid after a major update like that, and want to make sure I can still boot, but it wasn't required.
THIS is why I say the windows update process is fundamentally broken and archaic.