Linux

You can update your version of Fedora through the updater software as well but it's a very clear separate process that is initiated manually.

Distro version updates bring major updates to key packages - the one you'd notice most would be to Gnome, the desktop environment. There will be other things too that get only bugfix and security updates during the life of that version, and then after a while that version will lose support and you won't get any updates at all (https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/releases/lifecycle/).

Updating is very safe and reliable. I've had my Fedora install at work for 3 years, updating periodically and it's working extremely well.

This is an imperfect analogy, but think of updating between Windows 10 and 11 versus installing updates on windows 10 or win 11.

I have no experience with Fedora, but AFAIK at least in Ubuntu/Debian land, updates are installed from OS version specific package repositories. When the version of the OS is no longer supported, those repositories might not receive updates anymore.

EDIT: this is the main reason I have a rolling release distro on most of my personal machines. The package repos have the newest packages without having to update my OS major version every now and then.

Upgrading on Fedora is really easy from the software center. Never had any problem, never took any precaution.

But, of course, it’s always necessary to have a backup of your important files.

There is a distinction between regular updates and distribution upgrades. The latter have to be done manually. I know that distribution upgrades via GUI have been in the works; no idea if that is a thing yet.

https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/upgrading-fedora-new-release/

As for what's missing: The most important thing to keep in mind is that fedora releases only get security updates for 1 year after release + some grace period depending on the date of the n+2 release.

Poorly upgrades often only work manually. They are like dates, sometimes more happens, sometimes less, so they may be a bit random, but its good to wait a bit and then upgrade, as they introduce new possibly breaking changes. Meanwhile the old version (on Debian and Ubuntu even multiple ones) still get updates, mainly security fixes, but on Fedora I think there are none, so in a different way non-major updates