Tim:
It's not always necessary, but worth remembering that if things behave oddly after software updates you may have to:
a. Log out and back in again. b. Or, reboot.
It depends on what was in the set of updates.
Having said the above, I rarely have to do that.
Samuel Sieb:
And this is exactly why the default is to do offline updates.
Which, would mean, in my case, and many others, that updates wouldn't get done. And I intensely dislike the lazy approach of "we'll just make you reboot," rather than work out how to do an update that doesn't needed it. This isn't Windows.