OK, I think I understand a little more. Looking at
Wikipedia I see that SMP/E seems to aid you in package updates on z/OS. Yum on linux has some similar characteristics. Although I'm not sure it is as robust. In any case, do a search on yum and also yum history. For example:
Yum on Wikipedia. Also look at:
Yum History. Not all Linux distributions use yum, but I've pretty much only worked with RHEL and CentOS. So, I have no direct knowledge of those other methods.
If you find a particular update causes a problem, you can undo it with yum. Is this what you were after? If I've missed the mark, please let me know.
