It’s a mix, and not necessarily limited to older laptops.
You want to stay up to date with security updates as much as possible. Feature updates are not as important, especially if you want the least bugs.
On windows you can defer security and feature updates separately, I typically set 1 week for security and 1 year for feature updates (Assuming they haven’t changed that option again). That’s been enough for me to dodge the data-deleting updates.
For Linux, I don’t think it’s separated as a quick user option so cleanly. You can install the LTS (Long Term Support) version of your distro. The maintainers of that will do security/bug fixes as needed and slowly push feature updates when they are very well tested.
It’s a mix, and not necessarily limited to older laptops.
You want to stay up to date with security updates as much as possible. Feature updates are not as important, especially if you want the least bugs.
On windows you can defer security and feature updates separately, I typically set 1 week for security and 1 year for feature updates (Assuming they haven’t changed that option again). That’s been enough for me to dodge the data-deleting updates.
For Linux, I don’t think it’s separated as a quick user option so cleanly. You can install the LTS (Long Term Support) version of your distro. The maintainers of that will do security/bug fixes as needed and slowly push feature updates when they are very well tested.