The answer is:- “It’s complicated…”.
As far as your document files are concerned, you should be unaffected, in that large efforts are made so that files created under earlier LO versions can be opened by newer LO versions (I am unaware of any bugs in this regard - other people will quickly jump in if I’m wrong!).
Most of the issues occur due to customisations to LO made whilst you use it. Those customisations are stored within your personal Profile (look at (menu
):Tools
→Options
→LibreOffice
→Paths
to discover where this is) & may be overwritten on version update. Making a backup of that dir/folder may be a sane option.
Version updates are only for the current ‘line’ of LO (4.x, 5.x, etc.). Thus I’ve got both on my system & get told that there is an update when I boot up LO4 but not when I boot LO5. I guess that this may vary when a particular version is deemed EOL.
I know of no problems in jumping versions when updating. LO is provided in 2 basic versions:-
- Fresh(currently 5.0.0.5)
“LibreOffice Fresh is the stable version with the most recent features”
- Still (currently 4.4.5)
“LibreOffice Still is the stable version that has undergone more testing (over a longer time).”
If this helps then please tick the answer ()