I started daily driving Linux since I left school this year and used it before but mainly windows because school wanted us to run Word, Teams, etc. Today I wanted to play games and haven’t set up my device for gaming and didn’t want to download the game twice (good internet). Like a good PC user I wanted to do my updates. It really sucks on windows. I had three windows updates to make, one crashed. It rebooted my device 4 times. Also I needed to update other drivers and applications. Now I really appreciate package managers more than ever before.
I think it is more gentle when you actually use the OS. But OP says they don’t use it a lot. I basically don’t use Windows a lot for so many reasons, but in the odd occasion I need to use it, it’s like OP’s experience. There are so many updates and the thing insists on installing them, or you think it’s gonna be okay to install them --accostumed to pacman, apt or whatever. If you agree or click on Install updates as they recommend, there you go into the rabbit hole of Windows updates.
This. I have to use Windows for work and it doesn’t actually update that often. And when it does, I just choose “update tonight” and it updates when I go to shut down at the end of the day. But at home where I have a Linux/Windows dual boot, it seems to update every time I boot it up. My Linux install seems to also have a lot of updates but it just shows a tray icon and lets me do it whenever.