so elive is better than windows on this sense, because you can:
- do nothing and have everything kept as is
- remember that this includes automated upgrades by elive-upgrader
- or you can reinstall to not have everything kept as is and to have things different, new and improved
This means, for example I did recent improvements in the default config of smplayer, this means that you can do nothing and having everything kept as is (to continue using your old config / own settings), or to update your smplayer conf to have improvements on subtitles, rendering, and stability of the player... but it is your choice! windows doesn't offers that, not any other distro offers that, they all: kept things just as is as a SINGLE option
And finally, if you want advanced mode you can read: How to update your Elive, the correct way
quote from the howto:
@triantares I feel like answering the same question multiple times or there's a generic confusion about "why to upgrade" related things, do you think this part needs a better wording or a different explanation? 
maybe a FAQ entry with that? (i assume that is better to have it in the howto directly, so to explain everything)
