Yes, there were a lot of changes, especially given the concentration of software development in the US.
At the time I was dealing with Solaris a lot, and previously you had to reboot the system for things to become permanent, but there was a tweak made where the system started to stat() the file /etc/localtime to see if it changed, and reload it if it did. So new process would get the new tzdata bits.
The JRE/JDK has a separate tzdata updater:
* https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/javase/tzupdater-re...
So it may not as bad as it was in the past.
Previous the US tzdata bits hadn't change in several decades, over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, when basically the entire computer industry mainstreamed. So things may not be as bad as last time—but I'd still prefer a little extra time.