Some distros allow give you some flexability. RHEL as AppStream which allows you to pin particular sotfware to a specific version while upgrading the rest of th

Some distros allow give you some flexability. RHEL as AppStream which allows you to pin particular sotfware to a specific version while upgrading the rest of the system. The equivilent of Windows SxS would be like running everything in it's own docker container. Assuming each one was updated concurrently & they used a shared package cache this could still be quite fast compared to Windows. Even accounting for Window's 'impressive' ability to let you install any combination of updates/hotfixes. It's basic software engineering that the common case should be fast and considering that in 99.99% of Windows instances are going to have all of the updates installed, it's very apparent that the Windows update system & SxS were pooly designed and is an major area at Microsoft suffering from brain drain. I feel the most likely case is that no one currently at Microsoft (and still working as a programmer as many of the old talent are either retired or upper executives) understands it enough to fix the issue.