no automatic updates

Well it’s really not entirely true unless you’re on a rolling release (which most people should if they can do basic system administration themselves). Unattended updates were a thing in traditional Linux distros with frozen release cycles since forever. On any Ubuntu-based system it’s a matter of switching a toggle, and I think it could’ve been Mint that enabled that by default (I’m not sure) at least for security updates, because users never updated their systems. They can still be done much quicker and more transparently than Windows does that, without ever forcing users to reboot in any given time.

The problem is also that once in like 5 years you absolutely have to upgrade system to a newer version to keep it updates in such scenario. Popping up a dialog with info that your system goes EOL and you’ll loose security updates and one click upgrade button should be enough.