The difference is that if an upgrade breaks a Linux install (which is much rarer in my experience) I can often simply change the setting, revert the update, use a different distro/version, or even undo the change myself. Hell if it’s was kernel deep, nothing stops you from recompiling yourself, if the problem warrants it.
We can more easily run special Linux versions in a virtual machine without having to do a bunch of registry/gp magic and hope it sticks because Microsoft likes to force updates through your settings anyway.
There are more options for dealing with problems and they suck less.
With our HP laptops they would work perfectly so long as you only ever used them with one brand of dock. If you mixed dock brands without doing a full restart (like say having one brand at home, suspending, and then using another brand’s dock at the office) Wi-Fi, suspend, and several other features would no longer work or work intermittently. We had HP and Targus working on it, even their engineers were puzzled.
Problem was non-existent on Linux…