Not that I'm touting Microsoft's record on ease of use, but I don't think that patching Windows is that big of a deal. On my own Vista PC, I have it set to auto-magically download and install new "critical" updates at 3am. Service Packs aren't common enough that I need to worry about remembering which version I'm on. The process is actually pretty transparent to me. Since it's a home machine, I even let the patching process restart my computer if necessary. I wake up one morning, my computer is logged out and I know that I had a patch installed overnight.
I kinda like that keeping my computer up-to-date doesn't need my involvement. I'm not a Linux user (I've tinkered, but never very seriously), so I don't know the process, but I can't imagine that it's easier than that.
~Tim
