Yes, you always could. That’s not my point at all. Linux in general has been less stable through updates than Windows in my expense and in a lot of people’s experience. Steam os preserves root and wipes all packages that aren’t supported in the base install every update. So it forces stability. This is the length Valve has gone to in order to make Linux stable. Android is also stable in that same way. By making root fs essentially read only.

To make Linux more stable you have to reduce user choice and a lot of users are okay with this.