Absolutely, but unless you're on a rolling release, it still won't be that long. For example, my homelab ubuntu server didn't get updated for over a month, but when I finally did run updates it finished after no more than a minute.
Depends a bit on hardware and network speed though.
It shouldn't be an issue even on a rolling release. I mean it's not like it installs every intermediary version of every package, it just jumps to the latest versions no? At least that's how I imagine it works.
My Computers are all reasonably modern and decetly spec'd, resources should not be an issue. Ubuntu also ships with a lot more pre-installed packages than tumbleweed does, but I get your point.