Really? I moved from Windows on my NUC to ROCK/RoonOS precisely because of its “appliance” nature - everything is under the control of Roon Labs and updates to Roon and RoonOS are handled automatically and by them.
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The difference is that Roon OS updates atomically and uses a small percentage of the packages in a generic distribution. Hence it needs less frequent updates and if they happen they can barely go wrong. (And I assume Roon keeps tabs on CVEs that do need patching). That’s a very big difference to simply turning off updates in a generic distribution.
And before you say “yes but you can create a minimal Linux install yourself”, that would be missing the target customer again. Many can’t. I could but don’t want to. So yes, even I have a real reason to want ROCK
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Atomic updates, minimal install etc. are just implementation details that are interesting to engineers, but make virtually no difference in real life with a generic OS on a headless machine that only runs Roon core. Things can barely go wrong in that case too. The only time it needs intervention is at major OS updates, but that never happens more than once a year, so you can think of it as your furnace’s annual inspection.
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As others have pointed out, yes you are missing the point 
Here’s an example of a system without ROCK and I’d love a ROCK for it…
I have a Raspberry PI 4 running Raspbian + PianoTeq piano modeling software. It’s connected to a Kawai VPC-1. The RPI4 is using a HiFiBerry HAT and going into a speaker/headphone setup.
As you said, it’s near zero effort to maintain. However, after not touching it for ~3 years, yesterday, my SD card died. Now it refuses to boot. I have no piano in my office, and my kid, who practices on it is not practicing anymore.
I have ordered new SD cards, and they should be here today. Unfortunately, I fully plan on wasting hours getting this headless auto-boot to install back to perfect. This time, I’ll save the SD card image so I can just reflash it next time and create my own little “PianoTeq ROCK”.
If PianoTeq had an RPI4 OS image with their system set up on it (similar to ROCK for Roon), I’d much rather install that and not worry about it.
I’m also running an older version of the software and my Raspbian has not been updated in 3 years. There are some models I can not either since they take too much CPU. Supposedly there are things I can do to make those models run (drivers or something for the RPI4 are needed), but I haven’t invested the time into figuring this out. A PianoTeq ROCK would figure this out and I’d have a much better time.
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And there you have the problem for many people.
Atomic updates etc are not an implementation detail because they (or lack thereof) have very real effects on people
How many people perform their own furnace inspection? Anyone I know gets an expert, and where I live they have to be certified and are closely regulated. Not quite so easy to get reliable Linux/Roon experts for a low price
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The best decision I’ve made was to buy a NUC and install ROCK. Trouble free, always turned on, quiet to the extent that I just forget it is there. Thank you Roon. I trust Roon Labs will find ways of making this work in a new market reality or find suitable alternatives. I just wish people would save us from their “absolute truth” and opinions about everything under the sun. That’s a huge waste of time and renders this forum into another unpleasant social media environment. What a shame.
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I didn’t say they do or should. People who know as much about computers as they do about furnaces need to “hire an expert” (i.e. call the relative who set up Roon for them). I do believe however that there are way more people who know how to click a few buttons and do an update than people who can inspect a furnace.
That’s your solution right there. And even without it, we’re talking a few hours in 3 years. I guess you think that justifies the effort of maintaining a “ROCK” for this rather corner case. I don’t.
Thank goodness @danny is the one making the decision then.
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So there are many reasons to justify the effort, but in the end, this is a business, so it can be measured by conversion and churn.
ROCK users convert more and churn less often. ROCK is also far more popular amongst our users than Linux and results in fewer technical support issues than Linux users. The release of ROCK also killed off goofy ideas like running Windows Server to get lean systems. We had hoped Linux RoonServer did that, but all it did was get a bunch of people that had no business running Linux asking about Linux support. ROCK fixed all that. We were even able to positively monetize the effort by offering Nucleus as a turn-key paid option.
ROCK works for a multitude of reasons for both end-users and the business.
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I guess your internet service never goes down for too long.
(Sorry @danny, I just couldn’t help it.)
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I’m sure you can monetize ROCK. After all, Roon is a business and needs to be profitable. If that can get people to use Roon - and thus listen to music - more than without, it’s of course good. I’m just trying to tell people they may be more proficient at doing it themselves than they think. If that’s not the case, I guess we’re still not where we should be in terms of “humanizing” computers, so we have only ourselves (computer scientists) to blame.
Easy for furnaces, very hard for computers
If they have one. This most efficient thing this person will do is to put them on ROCK in the first place
Uh… that’s the point of ROCK!
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General computing needs to be like that too. It’s not feasible to create a ROCK for every app.
If non-computer-savvy people end up with a non-ROCK core (including Nucleus), that surely is the work of a more computer-proficient relative
Yes, and after the first annual request, this relative will probably see the mistake they made
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If that’s the only way to get kids to visit, parents would definitely want to stay away from ROCK.
Or maybe if I use a week of my scarce vacation to visit my parents, I want to do other things with them than working on yet another computer. (Fixing the Windows and Android messes they created already takes a considerable part of that time as it is!)
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I still enjoy working on computers. When I stop, it will be time to retire.
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I love my Roon ROCK running in my NUC10i7FNHN but now that ROCK/Roon OS has support for UEFI BIOS, the options are almost unlimited. Going from Legacy BIOS to UEFI BIOS is one of the biggest upgrades Roon Team have accomplished recently. Thanks @Danny and team 
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