As I said, there is no match in scope, but that is a limitation of proprietary software.

But for OS components--and Microsoft considers IE such--the automatic updates feature is on par with anything offered by the leading Linux distros. And by default it is completely automatic.

I don't believe that Windows' update system is anywhere near as nice as Ubuntu's, but that's not really the point. Microsoft has tried to make it as painless as possible to have critical updates applied to a system. You are free not to trust them (I check every update from Microsoft as well), but that wasn't really the point. The article summary said that Windows didn't have an update feature, and this is simply not true.

Internet Explorer may not have an auto-update system, but Microsoft Windows has an update system rivaling that of Ubuntu and OS X in automaticness, if not scale.

Since Windows encourages users to allow automatic updates installed at 3am every morning and also by default installs any pending critical updates at system power down, it doesn't seem like any supported version of Internet Explorer should remain unpatched for too long.