That's the result of (maliciously) bundling security updates with feature upgrades. Security and feature updates should be entirely orthogonal, so that you can install security updates without affecting the functionality.
That is actually done for a reason. If you are old enough you'll understand why.
A combination of terrible antivirus software combined with really dumb ideas on the internet created a situation where a whole bunch of folks were disabling antivirus and other security features, which was leading to huge security issues across billions of devices. That, and malicious software figured out how to disable security measures as well, so Microsoft went nuclear and they do everything possible to reset things to defaults.
Of course, other teams saw this and Microsoft sometimes resets settings to things it unrelated to security, which just pisses everyone off.
Overall, they are doing a horrible job. They actually pushed me back onto Linux (likely for good, since all my software now works without compromises), and I've seen quite an uptick of folks who've done the same. Valve has made this easier by all their hard work getting games to "just work".
I'm under no illusion that Linux will gain significant market share overnight, however, things are shifting.
Maybe, but that is again not necessary. dpkg essentially shows you a three way merge, when you changed a setting which default has changed and asks you what you want to do.
