Central patching had greater utility before operating systems had centralized build/packaging systems connected via the internet. When you had to manually get

Central patching had greater utility before operating systems had centralized build/packaging systems connected via the internet. When you had to manually get a patch and install it via a tape archive or floppy drive, or manually copy files on a lan, only having to update one package to patch a libc issue was a big help. Today it would require a single command either way, and so doesn't really have any significant benefit.