suse config after smart upgrade

[Gavin Chester]

I saw someone on a forum recommend that you keep your suse system
configuration files informed and updated of the changes to your packages
by executing these two commands as superuser AFTER doing your smart
install or upgrade: 
	# SuSEconfig
	and then  
	#ldconfig
NOTE: the upper/lower case syntax.

I've done a lot of smart updates to suse without this additional
operation and there appears to be no harm from NOT doing it.  However,
yast performs that system config update every time you change a
configuration file so my question is whether that operation is something
unique to suse and should I do it as advised to keep my system running
in peak health? 

Gavin