On Tue, Dec 20, 2016 at 7:09 PM Sudhir Khanger

I think the bottom line is that you are caught between a rock and a hard
place. Either take the productivity hit by updating and restarting or take the
security hit by not updating.

You aren't in a rock and hard place though. Restarting is not strictly necessary. It is a good idea however. You can also choose to use a more conservative distribution and apply just security updates. C.f RHEL/CentOS.

Rahul