I'm a tolerant person, but recently I switched from Windows to Mac because the forced Windows updates kept messing me up. One time I left a long simulation running overnight. In the morning, I was greeted by a computer that had automatically rebooted to install updates, killing my simulation. Another instance was my daughter's birthday party, where she wanted to show a movie. The computer decided to spend an hour doing updates instead. It seems like Windows has become an update engine that will sometimes also do computation for you.
My assumption is there's someone at Microsoft who gets a bonus as long as they keep presenting update graphs going up and to the right, and they don't care how much they mess up the Windows experience in the process.
This is exactly one of the main reasons why I switched to Linux, it doesn't do anything unless I let it or ask it to - with few exceptions.
My anecdote: I was about to have an important meeting and needed to print off some sheets from my Windows-based netbook. The power was low (<3%), so I plugged in the charger and resumed it from hibernation. It had been offline for a little while up until then because of traveling. Seeing the power was plugged in and I was shutting the machine down going into the meeting, Windows presumed that right then was a perfect moment to perform a Windows update. That night I wiped it and put Ubuntu on there.
FYI the Linux experience has been mostly great. There's been maybe a problem once a year, with some driver or package issue - but most of the time it runs great. I can safely run anything on it overnight knowing that it won't decide to do anything on it's own accord.
I shifted to Linux full time this year from MacOS. The only thing I desperately need is a replacement for is MS Office. Any ideas? I'm a power user, which Google word is simply not good for.
I know everyone is suggesting Libreoffice (and it has honestly gotten a lot better recently) but I remember once when my laptop died and all I had was a shitty old Centrino someone lent me, I ended up using the Microsoft online powerpoint tool to make a presentation that was due.
The web versions of MS Office tools are actually pretty well build and feel pretty close to their desktop counterparts.
The web version of word lacks an equation editor (someone told me this is partly due to MS loosing the source code for the one in word.)
If you have to write papers with a lot of math in them libreoffice's equation editor is way better anyway. It rarely crashes and uses it's own simple markup language instead of the finicky WYSIWYG editor in word.
Current versions are pretty good - and while MS Office is a veritable power tool (I know no real equivalent to MS Access), most users use ~10% of the functionality; sufficient for many, esp. at the price.
As for the formatting - yeah, MS doesn't seem to follow its own document formatting standards, even for the newer documents. That puts other suites in a hard spot: a) follow standards and present imperfect documents, or b) invest immense resources into bug-for-bug compatibility?
Joel Spolsky is obviously not neutral having been an Excel manager but he wrote that while everyone uses less than 20% of Excel, not everyone uses the same 20% of Excel.
I don't know Excel but I know there are people running entire departments on Excel spreadsheets.
Pandoc is definitely my favorite way to do word processing.
You can edit the markdown in vim which IMO is mentally easier to write prose in because you're not distracted with all the formatting and spelling. You use aspell for spell check and pandoc/pdflatex for typsetting.
That depends on what you use Office for - which is why I qualified my statement. I wouldn't recommend them as general replacements, but they exceed my documentation needs.
The obvious suggestion would be LibreOffice, but if that doesn't cut it for you, there's also SoftMaker Office[1], which has better compatibility with Office documents.
If you're not opposed to non-free software and like quality products, I highly recommend you check out Crossover[0]. It allows you to run Microsoft Office on your linux machine.
May I suggest org-mode? It can act as a pretty good replacement for Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and even FrontPage. You can even use latex inside org-mode documents and it has an integration with gnuplot.
can you drag'n'drop images graphically and position them in a visual canvas with org mode and add sounds and gifs and videos and center text by pressing a button ? if not it's not a replacement for powerpoint.
A perfect reflection of why Linux is a failure on desktop. If org-mode and latex are sane replacements for office for average users, may the kernel gods save us all.And this is from someone who knows how to use both.
I'd recommend onlyoffice. Has a similar GUI to MS office and it uses the doc/ppt(x) formats internally, so it's pretty compatible. I also run MS Office in Wine for certain things.
If you have licensed Windows, install Virtualbox on Ubuntu and install Windows in that. Share a drive between them and you should be able to maintain Office documents that way.
OpenOffice development has been virtually stagnant for several years: LibreOffice is the actively developed version (and the one that Linux distributions support).
I once had to leave to catch a plane and shut down my Windows desktop machine that I wanted to move somewhere first. I think this was as far back as XP days. It started doing updates on shutdown and I was concerned I’d lose data or break something if I powered it off (it did say not to!) so I was stuck waiting for updates but needing to catch a plane.
I'm by no means a low-level OS developer but I can't help but wonder, wouldn't it be possible for Windows to partition off part of the disk to copy system-critical files and then quietly stage updates in the partition (all of this with minimal thread priority so that if some other process demands resources/threads, it will pause/defer itself!). When the staged update is complete, it gives you a friendly notification "You have a new update available!" which you can then complete as fast as your disk can copy files (or even just set some flag to toggle the partition in use... The old partition then becomes the new staging partition)
Does that make sense at all or is this an unrealistic idea? EDIT: Maybe this is how updates already work, I'm not sure
> wouldn't it be possible for Windows to partition off part of the disk
This is what ChromeOS and Android do. At least on Android Pixel phones, there's A and B partitions for each of the boot, system, and vendor partitions. The bootloader tracks whether A or B should be booted. Userspace downloads the updates and writes to the opposite-than-booted partition. On reboot, the bootloader boots the latest partition. Downsize is these partitions are now double the size, so less space for the user partition.
So when Windows says you have an update available, the design is that it did all the work that is possible and all that's left is (in theory) the copy bit that's left.
My completely ill-informed guess is that there are exceptions to this rule by teams that aren't fully aware of how updates work under the hood and as a result upgrading takes longer than it really should. As time goes by those teams get hit with a stick and they fix things, but the upgrade team probably plays a fair bit of wack-a-mole.
The original devs for WinNT and NTFS made some interesting decisions with file locking. Hard locks in the Windows world are pretty difficult to identify, much less release.
The update stage all the files that need to be change and complete the release process on boot before any system processors are allowed to lock anything.
Are you sure? Because ChromeOS is just a Gentoo fork where google replaced the package manager to support their binaries instead.
Programs running in memory just stay running, even if you update the files that are those programs. This is how Linux works. Restart them when you need the new version.
Its clean. Its easy. I kept watching netflix as firefox compiled (~30 mins), and got to close the browser after the next episode was done, and open the latest Firefox to monkey with the new settings.
Eventually the kernel has to be updated, which you want to reboot for. Plus ensuring that the entire userland is running the same new versions of base system libraries isn't much less disruptive than simply rebooting.
Anyway, ChromeOS swaps the system and kernel between 4 partitions [1] - automatic update effectively installs a new system into the system partitions you're not booted from, then tells the boot loader to boot from the other ones next reboot.
I didn't know that (Gentoo user). I suppose it has more in common with Sabayon as a binary jobbie. The full Gentoo experience is not for the faint of heart but when you have spend hours watching compiler etc output and fixing breakage that would bring most users of an OS to their knees, you lose the dread inherent in OS updates.
You are nearly (and generally) correct about programs just stay running even when overwritten but of course programs generally consist of more than one file and might run more than once and if you update part of this and something reloads or whatever, you can end up in a world of hurt. That said, it is behaviour that I have relied on more often than I can count and so have you with your Firefox anecdote. I've done some remote Gentoo updates with systems in quite the broken state - it keeps IT interesting! I once had to get Puppet to install telnetd on some systems so I could repair sshd.
Several years ago I remember reading on stack overflow about how someone had managed to rm the ls program on a Linux system. Your anecdote reminded me of the fix. I’ll do some googling and see if I can find it. If I can, I’ll post it here.
Hats off to people like you. You’re what we mere mortals aspire to, and it’s always encouraging to hear that someone else has attained a level of mastery. Makes it seem more achievable!
Or maybe they can implement some overlay FS and updates will be stored in FS overlays. Writing to overlay would be possible even when Windows is running. Effectively shortening time when computer cannot be used due system updates. Basically the only disrupt would be just simple reboot to activate the FS layer due Windows file locking.
I dont think this is the problem itself. A lot of the problem is the user directory is a mess of both user created data and system data all jumbled about.
File copy speed itself is rarely the problem. IOPS, where hundreds of thousands of small read and write operations in the registry and other small files dominate the process.
"Another instance was my daughter's birthday party, where she wanted to show a movie. The computer decided to spend an hour doing updates instead. It seems like Windows has become an update engine that will sometimes also do computation for you."
This is, unfortunately, also true of Sonos.
I would say that more than 10% of my attempted sonos usage is blocked by an update process.
If you're just turning on the news for 2-3 minutes while you pack up your things, that's a 100% outage for you.
The distinction being that Sonos updates rarely take more than a minute or two, and I've never seen one that was actually mandatory (the controller app will bug you about it, but it usually works anyways). Would be nice if it could automatically update while idle and I never had to worry about it, but that hardly seems necessary IME.
Granted, I've also never had Windows 10 unexpectedly reboot on me or force an update at an inconvenient time, either. If you're proactive about running updates at times that are convenient for you, and don't just ignore every popup and warning that Windows gives you when it's waiting for a reboot, you'll never see it reboot when you don't want it to.
I agree I've never had Windows do an inconvenient update on me. But I'm like you, I don't ignore all the update warnings, I do it when I go to lunch or whatever. But I know lots of people who will seemingly not take note of any popups that come up and just ignore them forever.
Have said that, these days it should be possible to build up a pattern of when you use your computer and do the update when it's never being used.
>these days it should be possible to build up a pattern of when you use your computer and do the update when it's never being used
This'll work for 99% of cases. The remaining 1% is millions and millions of people.
I wonder if the system could give you a few weeks grace time to update, and if you keep ignoring it the system starts slowing down (while explaining why and asking to update). Some people will try to ignore forever and there needs to be some way to motivate them to choose a time (instead of taking control away and risking choosing a very bad time).
It's funny you mention this as I had a very similar thought the other night when clean-installing an old gaming PC to try some VR stuff on.
I'm used to using a Mac, and the update notifications can definitely be annoying, but Windows' default update behaviour is another level of excruciatingly bad UX. I assume — perhaps wrongly — that you can stop windows from installing updates on shutdown/restart. However, the other night (on Windows), forcing an update on shutdown was the only obvious option available to me. I can't fathom what the rationale is to force this kind of experience on users.
When I want to shut my computer down, it's because I want it to turn off, not start a new (oftentimes looping) operation to install software that I won't immediately see (or need to see) the benefit of.
And then it wants to finish those updates after you restart. This cost my wife so much stress when she'd fire up her laptop right before delivering a lecture, only to find it busy for minutes completing the update.
The last time I installed Windows most of the greeting messages came off as patronizing or subtly sinister, like that one.
Throughout Windows’ history, even before I had ever used Macs, it has felt as if someone at Microsoft keeps having the wrong idea about what people adore about Macs, and tries to imitate that in a “we can do it better” way.
Initially I really wondering about the intention behind this new style of messages (casual and personal, lots of "we"), but now I think they are trying to get people used to the idea of "operating system as a service". It seems likely that this is where all these "We've got an update for you, just sit back ;-)" style of messages come from. Curiously, the bluescreen talks about "your computer" having an issue, though, with a sad smiley, no less.
I wouldn't mind these forced updated, if they took seconds like on Linux. Why are Windows updates so slow? And why I cannot use my computer when updates are running (like on Linux). Part of the problem is that Windows locks files so they cannot be deleted/replaced when full blown system is running, but it has to be more I don't know about the update mechanism.
Very little time is spent in replacing actual files. Huge amounts of time are spend in the registry and other small IO operations. Also .net rebuilding wastes huge amounts of time.
I experienced the same when attempting to show Forza Horizon to a friend, not having played it for a bit it required a 300Mb update before launching. I could not find what was updated.
Overall my experience on Microsoft store has been sub-par, eg comparing to steam.
I switched to Ubuntu, gave up hope MS would come out with a Windows-lite with how big Win10 is getting, and how they're trying to put Win10 on smaller devices. A lot of devices that come with Win10 really shouldn't have such a bloated OS, and I mean that even if they're just going to be using Office.
Pleasantly surprised so far with Ubuntu, hardly any hacking to start coding and running databases etc.
Humble tip - You can pause updates for up to 45 days. During this period, you can enable them at your leisure. This is what I do when I'm leaving my computer for an overnight rendering.
My own humble tip - switch this shit off. Here's what I've found to work for me:
0. install whichever Windows 10 has the group policy editor - I've got Windows 10 Pro, I think. (I'm at home right now and my work laptop is at the office)
1. run gpedit.msc
2. Go to Local Computer Policy\Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Windows Update
3. Double-click Configure Automatic Updates
4. Set up as follows:
- Overall group policy setting = Enabled
- Configure automatic updating = 3 - Auto download and notify for install
- Install during automatic maintenance = unticked
- Scheduled install day = 0 - every day
- Scheduled install time = 03:00
- "If you have blah blah" = Every week
- Install updates for other Microsoft products = unticked
Result seems to be that updates are downloaded, and there are notifications, but there are no forced reboots.
Three things to note:
- this works for me. Ask yourself: are you me? But even if you aren't, don't let that put you off, because you might still get lucky
- there's a popup that pops up to say something like "updates are ready, click to install" - and this actually means literally precisely what it says, nothing more and nothing less, so for god's sake don't do what I did at first and click it thinking that it means you'll get the option of saying no afterwards and then wonder why all the updates are installing. Go to the updates section of the control panel by hand to see what updates are ready before approving them
- the above settings are just what I have set on my work laptop, copied out from the dialog box, based on a screen grab. Some of the settings may be the defaults. I don't remember which
The absolutely infuriating thing is, as soon as a ”disable updates” hack gains posterity, Microsoft shuts it down. If you just follow the first Google result for disabling updates, you still end up getting reboots.
It’s one of the most anti-user policies Microsoft has pulled, and they have a long list..
My understanding is that the group policy business is 100% intentional, and it's how you're supposed to do it. If you're an IT guy responsible for a whole pile of PCs, you need a way to stop them rebooting all the time, and this is how you do that.
MS know how their bread is buttered. Who there would dare shut this down? The program managers know that if they break this stuff, there'll be a legion of angry IT guys clubbing together to pay to have them killed.
Not to distract from this useful tip, but remember when huge blocks of instructions like this were reserved for Linux desktops, and windows (mostly) just worked? What a wild world we live in.
If you're on Home edition, you can try O&O's ShutUp10 tool [https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10]. I used to make manual registry entry changes on one of my machines with Win10 Home, but I use this now, and am happy with it.
On my Win10 Pro machine, I've switched to the semi-annual channel and disabled automatic installations via GPE.
Doesn't change the fact that you end up having to actively manage the OS not screwing up your workflow, that's not how I would define "good". Plus I would always forget.
The alternative is horrifying though. No regular user ever updates their stuff unless they're forced to, and in a world of increasingly horrifying botnets that can cripple the world economy on command, I can see why having the average user update automatically is necessary. Note that the average user (even myself, who is fairly good at keeping the latest version of everything installed) wouldn't have this problematic update with the (potential) data loss installed yet. You would have to have manually done it.
Does windows not give you the 250 warnings that it used to to postpone the restart? I turn off my computer every night, so I haven't even noticed that updates occur for ~1.5 years.
Decades of force-feeding users unwanted features has trained them to not install updates. I know most people in my family flat out refuse to update software because they're afraid the developers will have decided to re-do the UI again, or move menu options around, or just break major functionality. So because we, as software engineers/companies, can't resist the urge to keep changing things and doing endless re-designs, end users are trained to not get the vital security updates they need.
As an industry we need to get better. A software update should mean things like "improved performance" and "better security", not "totally different UI" and "20 features nobody wants". If users really want the new shiny, it should be optional.
> re-do the UI again, or move menu options around, or just break major functionality.
...or reduce performance on otherwise perfectly good hardware, possibly due to the those changes or the "20 features nobody wants".
I'm a computer professional, and even I have this anti-update attitude for exactly that reason. At least I have the competence to mitigate the security risks through other means, but I can't well recommend anyone else do the same. To quote Tom Lehrer, this makes me feel "like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis".
Major Windows 10 releases continue to receive security updates for quite some time after a new release drops, so force-feeding major releases to home users is not even necessary to keep users secure. As for warnings, as soon as the update is auto-applied you lose the ability to reboot without having your OS replaced and possibly rendered inoperable. Security updates are quick and mostly painless, on the other hand, but home users don't get to choose what to install.
It's 35 days for me. There's also a nasty gotcha where I paused updates and then enabled them, and then it wouldn't let me pause again for some fairly long period.
All that is needed to make the system usable is the ability to turn off all automatic restarts; tell me to do it, even nag after a while, just don't ever do it automatically.
It's the worst when the automatic restarts kick in again, but you're stuck behind an update that consistently fails at the same point. Super frustrating.
It's annoying but if uptime is critical you really need to change the settings for that. The reason Microsoft forces updates by default is because of all the incompetent computer users out there (especially older folks) who bitch and moan about how insecure and unstable their Windows that they haven't updated in 2 years is.
If uptime is critical, what on Earth are you doing with desktop Windows? There are even server variants now, if you need to have the Windows flavor.
And worse: I'm all for auto updates...unless they break the system! (See article.) No wonder people are holding off upgrades. (Not Windows-specific, for sure - but Win10 seems to be the worst offender)
What kills me is that the "active hours" setting stops you from setting longer than 8 hours. I want my server to install updates between 0100 and 0500, but that just isn't possible.
That's easy enough to prevent if you peek into the update settings[0][1]. I have restarts blocked from 8AM-2AM, due to not wanting it doing it during the day when I walk away from work. You would want the opposite. Set that to 5PM-11AM and you'll never have a nightly restart again. I've used Mac and Linux but had issues with all of them, worst being desktop Linux with basic things (for a power user), and Mac software issues[2]. Windows 10 is in my opinion the best version of Windows yet, even if it's also imperfect. You definitely need to dig into the settings if you want things to be right for you, but that applies to every OS, including iOS and Android.
That update option window says "max 18 hours". Doesn't help when leaving computer for 24 hours+ to render. The other thing is you might have critical work happening, and really don't want any risk of problems due to updates. So even if you're not using PC, you don't want updates to happen for a couple of weeks or longer until project isn't so critical.
The forced updates, even for advanced users, is the single reason I refuse to update to Windows 10.
If you are not going to be at the desk for 24+ hours at all, then you would hit this slider[0]. Updates don't come through that often though. A patch every 30 days, a service pack every 6 months. I run 30 days behind on patches, and 365 days behind on service packs. If your machine is used that often for 24+ hour rendering projects, you might want a non-home edition of Windows10 such as LTSC.
I do agree though that there should be a simple option, "do not restart for updates until I click on a prompt". I'm on the same page, but I'm not convinced the situation is as dire as everyone makes it out to be.
That's a strawman argument, because an alternative was already offered in my post. Yes, you can upgrade your software to prevent it. I don't care what you personally prefer or choose to do, I'm just telling the facts and options with Windows.
Why don’t they let people set a certain day in the week for major updates (E.g. Sunday), and only the most important micro updates are force-installed immediately?
You should blame your simulation software vendor (which could be yourself, lol). Windows gives software a way to tell, that computer is busy, and if your software did not do that, I am not sure how is this fault of Windows?
Without that, computer might go to sleep, which would happen on any other OS too under default settings.
The onus should not be on the user or the user's application to tell the computer "don't do this thing". It should be up to the user whether some thing gets done. The user is supposed to command the computer, not the other way around.
There is a setting for sleep timer, which people disable on desktops. It seems pretty ridiculous to suggest to call an api, to not randomly do things that the user didn't instruct.
It never stops to amaze me how unwilling most people are to explore the latest Win10 options to always defer updates by number of days (eg stay a week behind on feature updates to let others be more on the cutting edge), or even temporarily freeze the windows update service by up to a two digit number of days.
If I ever wanted to be sure that no updates took place I'd use the freeze.
Switching OS might be a solution, but it is worth having a look at these first. The upside is never being behind on patches, and there are actually some bloody useful fixes coming down the pipeline especially as far as security is concerned.
I think the problem isn't just that Windows updates happen immediately by default. It's that Windows updates when you boot up your computer.
See, turning on a computer is an explicit declaration that you want to use it. Windows updates ignores this declaration by taking that time to itself. It doesn't matter if I can defer the update by how many days if one day it will stop/delay me from using my computer when I want to. Almost no one outside of IT Administrators turns on computers solely for updates and maintenance.
Contrast that with Linux (Ubuntu distro in mind) where updates happen when the computer is shutting down. In contrast with turning your computer on, shutting down is a declaration that you no longer need your computer. That's the OS' cue to chime in and perform some routine maintenance.
I wonder how much of this is an architectural problem. The first time I remember being frustrated with this Windows behavior was in Vista. Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I seem to recall that 95, 98, and XP used to do updates on shut down. I know Vista isn't fondly remembered but, gee, did they deliberately make it so that it updates when you start your computer? Why couldn't a company who takes pride in backwards compatibility keep the old update behavior?
To wit, people make a big deal about how immediately can you use your computer (i.e., start-up times) but all your fancy-schmancy SSD + hyperthreading set-up is useless if Windows decides to update just before that one presentation you've spent weeks on. Updating on shut down is the user-friendly way.
Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I think updates should happen when the user commands them to happen, not when the computer (or operating system vendor) decides when they should happen. If the user affirmatively commands the computer to update at a certain time, or on start-up or shutdown, fine. But why are we letting the operating system run the show?
It's not about that. Advanced users don't even have the option any more. MS could hide it deep in settings to disable update with 10 "are you sure" security risk dialogs. "yes i know the risks" etc, but no.... None of us can be trusted.
My memory might be wrong, but I don't think Windows 95 had automatic updates at all. They were tacked on when Windows security vulnerabilities became such a big deal in the late 1990s. Automatic updates felt like a hack in the beginning, and it feels like they still are.
Fair enough, and thanks for that info. I haven't really looked at it from the starting up point of view as the shutting down one.
For whatever reason it hasn't impacted me, and that's also having a laptop that only gets irregular use as well as my regular desktop, but I'll be more observant about this going forward.
For posterity, I realise I have been bitten by this.
Updates may have an "on startup" component to them. If you shut down, currently you are forced to install updates on the shutdown - this happens silently, without permission. But: It will just do the shutdown side - so that the next time you start, you're stuck there looking at the "startup part" where updates continue to install.
MS ought to fix this, either by changing how updates are installed in two phases, or to incorporate an automatic "shutdown/install"=>"start windows, run updates"=>"shut down" option.
Also they should let you just shut down the PC without having to install updates, especially if you don't have time to do so.
Currently, as a user, the only really safe thing to do would be to "update and restart" followed by a shutdown.
Well the attitude was that they are now "proud" of there updates and the new features they give away, so they want to shove that into the users face on starting up.
With a little creativity, one can redecorate routine maintenance into a parade of glorious futurism. And of course that parade needs to be the first you experience on the computers return to conciousness.
I routinely use Linux (Arch, Gentoo, Ubuntu, CentOS, several others) Windows (98 - 10 (yes, really 98), server 2000 to 2016) and I speak quite a few other OS dialects (NetWare and FreeBSD fex).
The worst for updates, by far is Windows 10 and server 2016. I'd better qualify that. Gentoo can take a really long time to crunch through say 1GB of source code if not updated for a few months. Firefox can take an hour or so on its own and LibreOffice is a whopper as well. Older Windows versions, say 2008 R2 can take a good hour some months. NetWare updates need a skilled surgeon (or someone who can read a manual). pfSense (FreeBSD for me) upgrades can be a bit fraught but generally not. However all of those will get you there eventually.
W10 and 2016 are different beasts altogether. They do a pretty decent job of hiding the nitty gritty away from you and I actually like the auto "just do it already" approach and can set "active hours" to tailor the experience. However, it takes bloody ages to run and often needs more than one reboot - sometimes three (ie update, reboot, something doesn't work, reboot, still doesn't work, reboot, now it works).
The error messages you get are awful and generally need forensic analysis elsewhere - a naiive Google will get you to some MS forum and a suggestion to reinstall Windows.
Switching OS is not really a solution but whining about the update experience within potential hearing (HN) of those that might be able to do something about it is a good idea 8)
Though my range of operating systems isn't anything like as wide as yours, but still across a pretty broad range of systems, Windows, especially 10, comes out by far the worst.
My other pet hate on Windows that's been out of control since 7, and getting worse with each generation, is the insane hidden wastage under /Windows that simply constantly grows.
After it's a year old, between winsxs and the various installer and update folders you can easily burn 50-100GB of space under ./Windows for an OS that took say 3GB to install. You can clean up only some of it.
Just one note, once you pause, you apparently cannot pause again until all deferred updates have been installed. So yes it helps, but only for so long. The other deferment options seem like a more reasonable way to just purposely lag behind major changes.
Even deferring updates is not really good about being in your face enough about having a pending update ready, so eventually it's going to update by itself anyway.
Regarding switching to Mac, it never ceases to amaze me all of my colleagues who opted for a company Mac when all the productivity tools they need run natively on Windows, and sometimes not on Mac at all. So they set up a Windows partition which is never big enough and they always have problems with. Their choice was purely out of fan-boyism, and they all regret it.
Bizarre. I've seen something like this already in spring. A colleague lost all their documents, and calmly claimed it was probably "Windows Update". Apparently it is common knowledge in the office that Windows Update sometimes does that. I could never verify nor reproduce it, and chalked it up to "users say the darndest things". Files were simply restored from backup. Now I'm beginning to wonder if there was more to it.
That being said, I personally haven't had problems with Windows 10 except for the very first months. I'm quite happy how stable it is and how at the same time they frequently push out new, useful features (the new console, ssh, nicer gui, immersive search, package management, ...). Microsoft, please don't mess it up and force me to go LTSB...
But how long will perpetual Office licenses be sold by Microsoft?
Problem is... 75% of Microsoft’s customers will be satisfied with Office 365 - the other 25% are utterly allergic to the notion of losing sovereignty over their data, but knowing Microsoft they’ll optimise for that 75% and eventually stop servicing the remaining 25% who desire perpetual licenses and on-prem storage, presumably they’ll be happy with OpenOffice thus giving MS’ Office org an excuse to ditch that market segment entirely.
...and that would trigger Microsoft’s aping of Apple’s similar departure from their customer base, which means they lose their halo effect.
Install it (burn it to a USB drive using Rufus, for example, or to a DVD). Then use a KMS key and one of the many public KMS servers that let you activate Windows without having a key. Cmd as admin:
I purchased a full Windows 10 Pro license key and yet I am going to pirate the shit out of Windows.
I don't want Microsoft siphoning off data from my PC. I don't want Cortana. I don't want ANY FUCKING THING except for a system that is minimal and it works.
Why doesn't Microsoft make a developer friendly version NOT targeted for consumers (aka without all the bloat)!?
Edit from the other post:
Don’t forget the registry system, poor DPI scaling, UI piece patch going back to Windows XP (mouse pointer speed dialog box), BSOD if a third party hardware segfaults, fuck you Windows Explorer, everything freezes until network access time out has expired, control panel nightmare, Metro UI with giant lists(ever tried changing default program for say .chm file extension!?), why can’t I force quit without having to go to Task Manager?, etc.
Windows is a poorly made piece of software rotten from the core. If you look deeper, you discover the horror of how things work and fragments from Steve Ballmer days.
You can try to make an argument that it’s not rotten to the core, but no way in hell anyone would say “Windows is beautiful” in the way one says Unix is beautiful.
Why are you fighting the wind(ows)mills? Linux desktop is in it best shape since its inception. Mint (doesn't siphon), Ubuntu (siphons responsibly) or Manjaro (if you miss rolling updates, but for humans)... Why suffer needlessly?
There are two sides of this coin. I have abandoned my attempt of running Linux on my laptop after 17 years. (My Linux server usage goes back to 1993.)
There are always problems. Bluetooth breaks often, the MFC device on upgrades, enterprise wifi is iffy (and now it's only enterprise wifi but up until very recently, it was 5GHz wifi) ...
I am now on Windows 10 w/ Linux subsystem for Windows. The big upgrades are put off with Group Policy, the small updates run overnight because I leave the laptop docked and powered when I am sleeping. But reboots are rare. The big upgrades I wait 4-5 months with installing. This is a solved problem. O&O Shutup10 deals with the privacy issues, I think (also I think this is overblown, the privacy fight is lost already).
Linux used to be terrible on laptops, but I recently bought a laptop, installed Linux (Fedora with KDE) on it, and everything just worked out of the box.
You're probabaly waiting for the "except..." - but there is no "except". Everything works the same or better. I get hours more battery life than windows after installing powerTOP, and about the same before doing that.
I ran Arch before I tried Fedora, and from that experience I found that the only way to get Enterprise WiFi is by using network-manager and nm-applet (both of which come with KDE on Fedora so I had no issues when I switched).
Out of box Linux support for most laptops is surprisingly good now, leaving the overall quality of the laptop as the real issue. Tons of crummy machines out there with poor displays, hinges designed to fail, a million screws yet the screw mounts love to shear off at the slightest force...
Chromebooks are a good value if you are buying new, but a 3 or 4 year old Thinkpad is usually what I target when upgrading. Replace the battery, upgrade the screen to a 1080p or 3k panel and you have a decent, durable machine for $250 or less.
Use an Enterprise ISO that comes with Local Group Policy Editor.
From there you can turn off or on any feature or function.
I specifically use it to disable all windows defender applications and firewalls (which also automatically kills windows store and updates unless turned back on)
With something called execTI. It lets you modify the registry as a TrustedInstaller so you can turn off any services running aka the 5 or 6 different windows anti malware, defender, firewall, and security services.
If you want more instructions I will help because it is extremely annoying and every update does turn everything back on for the most part. So I do this cat and mouse game about every 2 or 3 months.
My laptop usage on 16GB of ram goes from 25% idle to just under 10% idle. which is my entire point of doing it so I can save battery life that I don't really have.
For me? Because I'm trying to work through the several hundred steam games I've accrued from humble bundles over the years (and for one or two works apps hopefully going away soon).
I used Linux on the desktop for over a decade, usually with a highly customized FVWM2 config. I found windows 8 to be okay, and windows 10 to be a pretty good minimal desktop.
All my dev work is done remote on PuTTY anyways, so beyond a browser and terminal, other features are really the deciding factor.
Did you miss the announcement recently from Valve that Steam on Linux now bundles a version of wine + other goodies that make it so you can run many windows games now? Not all, but the list will grow. https://spcr.netlify.com/
I did miss that. But given I have heat problems on my system running some games already, it's not something I would want to use at this point. It does bode well for more choices in the future though.
I may do that at one point out of frustration, but don’t underestimate the enormous amount of stuff that one has to relearn for a reasonably advanced windows user. Not the least if you live in visual studio. And my job doesn’t involve managing linux servers. All I know about linux, I learned it toying with my synology...
Yeah, that's a big one. There is no other C/C++ IDE out there that can measure up to Visual Studio. Either you use vim or emacs with a hundred cobbled together plugins to sort-of approximate a productive development environment (and you still don't have a usable debugger); or install one of KDevelop or Code::Blocks, which are fine for toying around with toy/academic projects of less than 100kloc; or you shell out lots of money for one of Qt Creator or JetBrains' CLion and get a product that is almost as good as Visual Studio 5. I'd say if you want to actually write software, just install Windows in a VM and do a full restore every so often. It's a bit of a pain, but you get the absolute best C/C++ IDE ever created and can enjoy unrivaled productivity and unmatched performance.
Mint is a dangerous distribution and should not be recommended to new users. Just install debian or use the ubuntu netinstall (mini.iso) or some minimalist distro like alpine (although alpine probably isn't great for new users.)
It looks like there is now a report on appdb with a gold status, every time I checked it before it was borderline unplayable. Even now the gold report says it has constant flickering and fps drops. I'll probably try it, but knowing blizzard's tendency to completely break wine compat with some updates I really wish the support was first-party.
I'm not parent, but Overwatch runs very well on my computer with Wine + DXVK (Wine plugin(?) which translates DirectX to Vulkan). Performance is not noticeably worse than Windows.
If you have a laptop with switchable graphics, you will need to use nvidia-xrun to enable Vulkan passthrough to the dGPU, but aside from that I just followed these instructions: https://github.com/lutris/lutris/wiki/Game:-Overwatch
Note that the Blizzard app will fail to launch with DXVK enabled, so you have to disable DXVK, launch Battle.net, enable DXVK, and then click the 'Play' button to start Overwatch. I made a few scripts for this, so I just do `./disableDxvk ... ./startBlizzard ... ./enableDxvk ... click play` to run the game.
WINEPREFIX=~/.overwatch_wine/ setup_dxvk64 # enable DXVK
WINEPREFIX=~/.overwatch_wine/ winecfg # disable DXVK: delete the overrides from Libraries tab
exo-open Battle.net.desktop # launch the Blizzard app, the .desktop should be generated on install
> and yet a thousand light years away from Windows
Yep, in the front.
Stuff works. You don't need 32GB of memory to run anything. The system doesn't get locked down all the time while the OS uses the entire IO capacity. The computer does not misbehave all the time and instead does what you order. You get software for almost everything right from the package manager, and it works for you, instead of shoving ads or licensing constraints into your face.
Such rants would actually be believable when instead of cherry-picking the ultimate worst experiences and generalizing them you'd stick to more average statements, more reflective of the truth. I'm not saying this to defend Windows, denying it has problems would be insane, but just to let you know it's prerfectly possible to rant on Windows without going into extremes which sound ridiculous to people who actually know and use Windows on a variety of devices. E.g. I can rant the same way about Linux or OSX based on the worst experiences I had with it, and you'd recognize it would be far away from your experience. Also I can counter each of your examples just based on a Windows 10 install I happened to do a week ago so clearly something is off with your statements: after boot uses about 2.5GB of memory. Personally didn't experience lock downs, though I heard it from others as well, but not 'all the time'.. Driver issues? As far as I'm concerned it does what I tell it to, 'all the time'. I installed a terminal, text editor and IDE using a package manager. They all work for me and don't show adds nor licensing constraints.
Windows not running on 8GB of memory isn't non-usual. (Yes, 32 was an exaggeration.)
I see Windows using the entire IO capacity of my work computer every working day, 1/3 to 1/2 the time.
Windows update destroying your configuration isn't even news anymore. It restarting when people don't want is a widely known fact, and more than 1/4 of the times I have a half-hour meeting at work the computer stays there updating for 1 hour or more.
Windows software installation is a worst in class experience on nearly any dimension. It's not something that happens once in a while.
I don't know what you call "cherry-picking". Those "ultimate worst experiences" happen every day.
That depends on your needs and values. As far as freedom is concerned, Windows is a far cry from what Linux offers. Windows restricts you to NTFS as root filesystem, for example. Windows offers no open-source disk encryption. Linux distros come out of the box with great integrated tools and workflow, something Microsoft only wishes to emulates with its Linux subsystem. But Windows aims to restrict your workflow to singular proprietary applications like VS. Windows as a whole is a packaged product that makes choices for you, and restricts the user in the process. That may be OK with you, but in no way does that make it "light years" ahead of Linux, only the opposite. This isn't even mentioning privacy.
Not if the point is to get work done. I see a new version of Windows and my reaction is usually " oh that's nice, to bad it's MS and at some point it will be pathetic ". Because I know it's coming, it always does and it's always worse than the last thing that pissed me off. Linux Desktop is light years ahead if the point is to get stuff done and not hate your machine.
I too bought a Windows 10 Pro license, which was quite expensive. A while back I heard about the long-term service branch and I wanted to buy a legal license, but apparently it's only available for businesses and it requires purchasing at least 5 licenses. You can buy a LTSB license from third-party Russian vendors, but I think that's legally grey.
Recently I heard about Windows 10 Pro for Workstations, which allegedly doesn't include all the bloated crap and lets you disable most annoyances. But I haven't been able to definitively confirm this is the case. I read somewhere you can upgrade from Windows 10 Pro to Windows 10 Pro for Workstation, but it's quite ridiculous to pay them even more money just to remove / disable some features.
I've run a few programs that let you disable most of the things I don't use or care for... But you have to re-run them each major upgrade cycle, because Microsoft usually re-enables a bunch of crap after upgrades.
At this point I've pretty much accepted that Windows 10 is diametrically opposed to my interests, so I just try to avoid it as much as possible. I dual-boot Linux and Windows 10, and I only use it to play games which I can't easily run on Linux.
To anyone that feels like they have to comment because they're happy with Windows 10 and all those features: great for you! You can stick with something that you like and works for you. I'm not trying to force my preference down other people's throat.
What [well-known] OS doesn't do that? (Except for specific sandboxes for particular driver classes that every OS now has, like GPU drivers, or drivers for non-DMA USB peripherals. Windows has the most of these sandboxed driver classes, AFAIK.)
Of course, if your standard of comparison is something less well-known like https://genode.org, then few OSes are going to meet your expectations. ;)
> Why doesn't Microsoft make a developer friendly version NOT targeted for consumers (aka without all the bloat)!?
Maybe you have a different interpretation of "developer" than I do here (maybe POSIX development?), but to develop for Windows APIs on Windows, and test your code, those APIs have to actually be around to call, and have to actually do something. You can't update some old codebase that uses legacy Windows features to use newer Windows features, without your development box supporting both the legacy and the new Windows features.
> why can’t I force quit without having to go to Task Manager?
Explorer allows arbitrary shell extensions to embed themselves into its memory space, so it can't be trusted to run as root. An Explorer-launched "Force Quit" tool, that doesn't actually force most things to quit (because they're running as a different user), would be pretty useless/annoying/surprising.
Thanks! Is there a way to do this legally? I might try it in a VM but if I go down the road of considering it as an alternative I need to be able to do this completely legally. Money is not the problem.
It can be licensed through Microsoft Open License, but minimum order is 5 items.
It is also available for free in BizSpark subscription, if you have it.
Just to be clear: this is not the "legal" way. You won't end up with FBI busting down your door or getting a letter from your ISP/microsoft, but it's by no means "legit".
I booted back into Windows 7 once and the scheduled windows backup ran, deciding to overwrite an absolute ton of files, even though it had been configured to write to a specific directory that still existed and with plenty of room. I can't even imagine how these things happen, do they have dumb interns writing this stuff?
The whole user experience of installing Windows 10 is abysmal. Wife got a new laptop and I watched her to the initial setup. Stupid things like an "enter your pin" dialog that automatically opens another dialog that closes if you hit enter. So you quickly type your pin and hit enter and just see the dialog flash. Or the confusing "remove" button for the fingerprint scanner setup that just removes all of your fingerprints without confirmation. That's just one UI. It feels like some shitty enterprise software. Pathetic.
> ... dialog that automatically opens another dialog that closes if you hit enter.
I rarely get upset at computers these days, but this is one of the things that easily boils my blood. It happens with Windows and macOS machines at the most inopportune times. I'll be typing and hit enter, seeing a mysterious dialog appear and vanish in a flash as it stealthily hijacked my "Enter" stroke. "Great, who knows what I just accepted or declined."
It seems like a very basic UI consideration to discard any keystroke if the dialog spawned less than 1 to 3 seconds ago. Make it a global rule (Or better yet, a user setting) for all UI dialogs in the OS that is impossible for developers to override.
This is already done though? It's known as focus stealing prevention. One of my gripes with Linux is that it doesn't work well there, but I've found it is already very well handled in Windows; the trouble only comes up if (a) you pause too long for it to realize you're still typing, or (b) the app goes VERY out of its way to steal your keyboard (like hooking global keyboard messages) which is extremely abnormal. I'm surprised if you regularly experience otherwise.
Something is very weird about window displays in general. Take the list of wi-fi networks; sometimes the entire thing will just stop appearing, doing nothing when you click the icon! I eventually figured out that if I use Windows Search to pull up the WiFi Settings panel, and manually click the list of networks there, then the list is fixed (it does not appear in the Settings window though; it just pops up where it was supposed to be, near the taskbar icon).
I just don’t understand; I cannot fathom what implementation could be so complex that they can’t achieve full test coverage on something like whether or not a damned window appears when required.
> I cannot fathom what implementation could be so complex that they can’t achieve full test coverage on something like whether or not a damned window appears when required.
It does seem that complicated from my observations. Notice that it's not a regular window, but part of the overriding/overlayed renderer (DWM? something else?) that draws stuff on top with grayscale smoothing (Direct2D? DirectWrite? something else?)... which probably involves lots of communication between several processes. It feels like an incredibly heavyweight UI component, just judging from the lag between when the icon is clicked and when the list of networks pops up.
The QA team got folded into the main org a while ago. I'd be surprised if the person today in charge of the full test coverage has anywhere near the resources or weight to make an impact.
The product key re-entrance (or perhaps it was the first one? I don't remember now) dialog is also stupid in that the moment it detects you've entered the last letter, it immediately starts the activation process. Everyone who is used to typing in or pasting the key and then pressing Enter to submit it will end up canceling the activation, since the automatic focus immediately goes to the Cancel button when it detects the last letter entered. From my vague memory it was not like that in previous versions of Windows (enter product key, then press enter/click the button to continue) so what irritates me the most is that someone deliberately added code to implement this behaviour in opposition to probably every UI guide ever created.
I'm used to quiet and fast OS setup: Win10 doesn't goes well with me. If someone manage to find a way to strangle Cortana to death too, that'd be nice.
Was going to say much the same thing, except I've probably done it around 10 times - it's always gone fine, and it's so much faster than previous versions of Windows.
That really is sad. They should of had a team review all the reports and look for ones that seem bad enough. What are the odds a dozen users losing files is their own faults... Sheesh.
Well I’ve been waiting literally months for a laptop to complete its claim to be “installing” update 1709, and it never does.
The only feedback in the entire update process is a little spinning circle in a list of updates, which spins for hours on end without apparently doing anything until Windows suddenly out of the blue is “ready” to install and reboots. It will appear to get somewhere, reboot again, and somehow return to the desktop as if everything is OK, yet the update list claims that the update failed. Then it spins again.
I mean, even if it’s “good” that it doesn’t auto-install broken updates, it sure seems to be spending the absolute maximum amount of resources in terms of downloading data, consuming energy, wasting my time, etc. I suspect the size of the update is the factor they should most easily be able to control; patch something smaller and maybe it will actually finish. I don’t know, just seems like an utter mess to me.
You probably have the same problem I had, which is a slightly non-standard disk layout. Windows Update will fail without producing any meaningful diagnostics. It took me a lot of time and much effort to finally get past that and get my system working.
Things to check:
Are you UEFI booting an MBR disk? It works, but Windows Setup will fail in future upgrades.
Do you have all the correct and required partitions? If you don't have the right partitions (OEM, EFI) of the right size, Windows Setup will again fail with cryptic errors, none of which say "your partitions are wrong".
> Do you have all the correct and required partitions? If you don't have the right partitions (OEM, EFI) of the right size, Windows Setup will again fail with cryptic errors, none of which say "your partitions are wrong".
Worth pointing out you don't have to be sharing the drive with another OS to get this situation. I had a system which I upgraded from 7 -> 8.1 -> 10. My linux install and bootloader are on a totally separate drive. This left the drive with:
* 100mb system reserved partition (unused, created by win 7 installer)
* 250gb C: partition
* 400mb system reserved partition (created by 8.1 or 10 update, actually used)
Then I used the Samsung tool to copy to my new ssd and ended up with a 100mb system reserved partition and a 1tb c: drive. But the 1709 update tried to unpack the >100mb update into the too small system reserved partition and failed in a loop
Sure. My system disk was Windows only, but I go to pretty extreme lengths to avoid reinstalling Windows. So after my latest system upgrade I had a UEFI system running off a MBR disk and some bad partitioning. This was a source for much amusement...Window Setup would fail without explaining why, mbr2gpt would fail without explaining why, the BCD tools behaved badly, the Windows 10 recovery environment wouldn't work, etc.
Gradually, with much trial and error, I managed to work through each problem, until I wound up with a mostly correct GPT disk and a fully functioning system. It's now successfully applied several updates correctly, where previously it would get to 99%, fail, then roll back, only to try again the next day. As a side effect, I now know more about Windows 10 booting, the BCD, and GPT than I ever wanted to.
The only "problem" I have now is an unused old boot partition that I'm frankly terrified to try to remove, since it'll renumber all of the partitions and cause some problems. I'm relatively sure I know how to fix it, but it's too risky to contemplate right now.
Do you have a copy of unsupported software hidden in a sub folder anywhere on your local drives?
Client of mine had an old copy of the Novell client installer (it was never installed on this machine) sitting in a folder named C:\Old_Computer\ . Last year's fall update kept aborting with an unclear error dialog. The install log only gave a vague suggestion that the issues was unsupported software and DID NOT reveal the full path to the offending file, just the title of the software.
Windows desperately needs a shibboleet option, so power users can stop fighting it.
I was able to get the upgrade to finally work after I uninstalled the DisplayLink driver and a Splashtop app (for using an Android device as an additional monitor) and then it finally worked. I don't know which of the two (or both) were the exact culprit, but it was driving me bonkers trying to get that update to work.
For one of my clients, HP had a drive encryption program I had to uninstall for the update to finally go. Drives had never been encrypted, HP was just running it in the background from the start.
If you want to use Windows, just do it. But if you had to experience what it feels like when Windows thinks it is time for an automatic-forced-reboot-update which takes 4 hours the day you have to submit a thesis, then you might know why I am not so fond of Microsoft products anymore...
By the way, later that month I learned that I had been lucky as some people ended up being stuck within the update.
I am sorry, but that is no BS, just pure facts. Granted the PC is not very powerful (CPU: AMD E-350), but the story is true. When the update started, I thought 'Shit that thing didn't just reboot itself. Okay here we are, that will take one hour max.'. But in fact, it took about 4 hours.
When I was _forced_ into the windows 10 update, it went through the process and appeared to finish but didn't put my desktop back. No problem I figured, they put it somewhere.
So I did a file search, found the desktop in a folder, moved it back to the desktop.
A day later it self-restarted and _completed the update_, replacing the desktop with the now empty desktop folder.
I went to the Microsoft store to get them to do a file recovery and they had the _gall_ to tell me it would be $250 plus 7 days and they wouldn't guarantee recovery.
I moved to Mac this year after being exclusively on Windows since '98.
Unironically, I am in control of when and if any update happens on my Mac.
Also unironically, the described bug has not happened as a result of an upgrade, it was not forced on any user and definitely was not affecting the whole desktop.
From the articles you linked:
"The images get corrupted on copies to the USB attached external drive. "
"However, as Bombich notes, ordinary APFS volumes like SSD startup disks are not affected by the problem described above, so the vast majority of users won't be affected by it – the flaw is most applicable when making backups to network volumes. "
I am not sure you have read the original article and the two articles you linked, otherwise it would have been obvious that these are not the same by volume and severity.
> it would have been obvious that these are not the same by volume and severity.
If users don't have backups, any unintended data loss caused by an operating system bug is bad because it can be difficult or impossible to recover the affected data. Would you not agree?
You may not have been affected by the two bugs I described above, but some people would have been (more so with the image corruption bug).
> the described bug has not happened as a result of an upgrade, it was not forced on any user and definitely was not affecting the whole desktop.
If you go back further in time, there actually was a bug that resulted in data loss during an OS X upgrade.
Oxford Semiconductor has issued a statement with regard to the emerging Panther and FireWire data-loss debacle.
The company says: "Oxford Semiconductor has been investigating reports that some FireWire 800 drives have lost data after an upgrade to the Mac OS X 10.3 Panther operating system is installed (released late October).
"Currently we believe this issue relates to a change in the way Panther uses FireWire that affected version 1.02 of the OXUF922 driver software. A new version, 1.05 was issued by Oxford Semiconductor to the manufacturers of external drive products in early September."
As Macworld UK first reported yesterday, users installing Panther while having an external FireWire drive connected to their Mac have seen data loss; similarly, users with FireWire drives connected to their systems have seen data loss once they reboot Panther. At this stage, it appears that the problem is confined to FireWire 800 drives.
In 2001 there was also a bug in iTunes 2 that caused an entire hard drive partition to be deleted if the volume label was prefixed with a space.
Some Macintosh users who rushed to download the latest version of iTunes – Apple's popular digital-music player – were singing a song of woe on Friday. A bug in the installation procedure caused the application to completely delete their computers' hard drives.
The bug seems to have affected computers with a very specific configuration: people running Mac OS X who had "partitioned" big hard drives into several smaller ones, and who'd typed a space at the beginning of the drive name.
For example, if a Mac had a drive named " music" instead of "music," it might have been deleted by iTunes.
Tom Fisher, a computer repair technician who lost about 100 gigabytes of information during the installation, said that people often include a space in the drive name to ensure it shows up at the top of the list when they examine their drives.
According to Mac experts who examined the code of the buggy iTunes installer, the problem arose from a very tiny programming mistake – a forgotten quote mark.
Linux (specifically ubuntu in my case) also suffers from somewhat similar problems. Every time I update graphic drivers it's a diceroll on whether it will reboot into a black screen.
Sometimes it's recoverable from blindly pasting god-knows-what from stackoverflow. Most of the time I just have to do a complete reinstall.
(I guess it's not a complete brick on update because I have never suffered data loss, but it's similarly infuriating)
That seems like either a Ubuntu misconfiguration or buggy drivers when interacting with your hardware, but I certainly wouldn't say it's a "Linux" thing, may be a disto thing, Ubuntu's not known for caring much about the desktop these days. I have been using Linux successfully for more than a decade without such issues, which does not mean it didn't happen to you, but it does mean it's anecdotal. I am on a rolling-release disto, which updates much more frequently than Ubuntu does and yet, I've been able to continually upgrade a single install for the past 3 years without issue.
It's also nowhere near as bad as actually loosing data, as you mentioned.
I have also been using linux for over a decade and I still can't recommend it to any non-developers friends unless their hardware build is extremely common.
I am currently running two nvidia gtx 1080 SLI and multiple 4k monitors. Even for just installing the OS, I need to physically remove both graphic cards and use a smaller monitor first. This physically laborious workaround just to reinstall the damn thing is what amplified my rage when it decided to break on autoupdate.
> I moved to Mac this year after being exclusively on Windows since '98.
Funny, I use a Macbook pro at work, and windows at home. I'm not the kind of person that has strong preferences on tech, I use stuff until it stops working well and then I switch.
My several (over time) work macbooks have been really bad. OSX has so many bugs, many of them seem really serious potential security issues (graphical corruption across processes, login screen flickering to the desktop upon waking from sleep, ...). Lots of other bugs are just annoying and make things janky to use. It also does weird things that make me fear it is a fire hazard (e.g. battery draining within 24 hours while the lid is closed in my laptop bag).
On the other hand, a windows small form factor connected to my TV, and a surface pro have been basically hassle free. Obviously windows has bugs too, but none of the ones I've seen make me question security the way I do on OSX.
Wouldn’t it be a difference in the software you use for one context and the other ?
OSX has its share of dirty bugs but nothing out of the norm. You could entrust me your surface pro, and I’ll make it crash randomly with only legit pro software.
I have to say those screen issues sounds as if you have a dodgy GPU there, and the battery drain also sounds like a hardware fault. Have you had it checked out?
Sounds like you're the least lucky person on earth. I've had my MacBook Air for 5 years now, I've dropped it on concrete/tiles multiple times, it's dented as hell and the battery's wearing a bit, but it works just fine
I don't hope Microsoft dies, I just hope they realize how unreasonably stubborn they are being in forcefully shoving every new update of Windows down users' throats, and and that they then stop doing it.
We have 4 windows 10 machines here and a metered satellite internet connection for internet service. Didn't really think about it much until they pushed an update to all 4 machines the week after our monthly meter tripped on our service.
Next thing I knew I was on throttled internet for 3 weeks. Setting all the machines so that they don't update turned out to not be too hard, but was FAR harder than it needed to be. I'll decide when my equipment updates.
I did set everything to metered. That's how I finally stopped the updates. My point though was that MS doesn't consider very many non-mainstream cases.
One study says nearly 7% of all internet users in the US use a satellite connection. These are slow, and almost always metered. That is a lot of people getting surprise hammering of their connection.
While I’m not familiar with the equivalent features in Windows I believe MacOS can do this, you can have one machine share the updates to the others on your network. The feature is now even in the non-server version of the OS too.
You can cache iOS device updates with this mechanism as well. I’ve never bothered as I’m fortunate not to worry about metered bandwidth, but it seems like a nice feature if it works as advertised.
So, at best, that would have cut his data usage to 25%. I don't see how you assume this would've solved the issue when we're taking about such a massive update of an OS.
Did you mark the connection as metered in windows? Seems to be the only reliable way to prevent it from downloading updates automatically, if they "fixed" that, they have really lost their minds.
And thereby leaving millions of unpatched machines vulnerable. We just went through that with Android. No thanks. I think a more reasonable answer lies in Microsoft taking a better/different approach to Q/A.
It used to work fine pre-Win-10 where they gave you the updates and let you install them when the time was right for you. This stubborn obsession with the idea that no sane user could possibly have anything more critical in their life than installing whatever code comes out of your hands instantly is just nuts.
pre-Win-10, Windows was also considered the most bug-infested zombie-farm around.
idea that no sane user could possibly have anything more critical in their life than installing whatever code comes out
The problem is when you examine user behavior, they inexplicably seem to have something more critical than installing updates, 24/7/365. Which is how bot farms begin.
They need to give you the choice on whether to update or not. If you choose not to they should just maybe give you a warning on every launch and leave it at that.
Afaik you can still configure it this way in Pro and higher skews using the group policy editor. And it's not like they didn't try the "asking the user" thing before. It's just that many users will happily keep dismissing any kind of warning that doesn't immediatly make their computer stop working forever. That's just no longer something that's acceptable for a machine connected to the internet.
We're talking about herd immunity from viruses here. Imagine that there were a new deadly pandemic every few days. Should a human being, at that point, be allowed (by the social norms of their society, by law, whatever) to refuse to receive once-daily "vaccination updates"?
Here’s maybe a less-fraught analogy: say you have an autonomous car. Assume that the car’s autonomous-driving algorithms prevent it from hitting a person or another car no matter who’s driving, but don’t prevent it from, say, knocking down a telephone pole, or colliding with one of the support posts holding up a bridge.
Now, do you have the right to own and drive this autonomous car around on public roads, if you’ve modified the car to be an “open server” where anyone can anonymously connect to it from anywhere on the Internet and drive it around?
And, if not, then what’s the difference between that modification, and knowingly driving the car when it has an unpatched vulnerability allowing people to do the same?
And if you find that there is no difference, then what’s the difference between a vulnerable car that can DDoS physical infrastructure, and a vulnerable PC that can DDoS virtual infrastructure?
The missing part of your analogy is that in a safety-critical scenario like that, there's no way that the update to the car would be delivered alongside a change to make the UI go dark at night or a completely-rewritten version of the entertainment system. The second something went wrong with such a bundled update, the manufacturer would be annihilated by regulators around the world and/or by a collapse in consumer confidence.
MS could deliver security updates separately to feature changes but chooses not to.
The Tragedy of the Commons is that well-publicised incidents like this (and the trend of updates to consumer software, supposedly under the guise of enhancing security, to bring about significant changes in appearance and behaviour) make people less, not more, inclined to defer updates to all software with the result that developers feel the urge to strong-arm users into updating.
This is a completely disingenuous analogy. While both cases do involve a tragedy of the commons, in the autonomous vehicle example there is an additional immediate and severe risk of bodily injury or death to a human.
The only justifiable reason for updates to be forced in the example with the vehicle is the physical danger that could otherwise result, and that simply doesn't exist in the example with the home computer. To my mind, the line of thinking you are engaging in here is a perfect example of the rampant authoritarianism that seems to be so rife in the computer security community these days.
That's a ridiculous analogy. What if vaccines really did have a high probability of causing autism? Would you still argue that they should be mandatory?
How about if there not only was no FDA approval process for the vaccines, but the pharma company itself didn't bother testing them?
Because that's Windows Update in a nutshell. Every couple of months somebody breaks into my house in the middle of the night, even though I locked my doors and windows and posted a no-trespassing sign, and pokes me with a needle... and I'm supposed to just sit there and take it in the name of "security."
Two separate issues: if you first agree that herd immunity from an infinite stream of "zero-day pandemics" would require daily vaccinations, then you would turn around and demand that there be laws about what these vaccinations must be composed of, and how they be tested, to de-risk them as much as possible.
Imagine what the FDA already does, and then imagine that they were verifying a drug that would be given to every person in the country. There'd be a crazy strenuous verification system for that.
Imagine what the FDA already does, and then imagine that they were verifying a drug that would be given to every person in the country. There'd be a crazy strenuous verification system for that.
And that's a big part of the problem. Not only is there no 'FDA' to test these patches -- nor should there be -- but the manufacturer evidently doesn't test them either. They fired their QA personnel a few years ago, so that's now our (unpaid) job as users.
Even worse, there are some indications that this particular bug was discovered and reported by insider program members and actively ignored by the company.
Windows Update is apparently the team where Microsoft employs their B- and C-level players and managers. That's not OK. If you're going to insert yourself forcefully into everyone's critical path, you'd better know what you're doing.
I remember a memorable comment here that went something like "Windows updates are like vaccinations that have a high chance of making you blind, grow an extra ear, or turn your skin green."
Besides, if you look at what sorts of vulnerabilities they're actually patching, the majority of them require local access anyway; remotely-exploitable-by-default ones (fortunately) tend to be few and far between.
The point of herd immunity is to protect people that can't be vaccinated. Even if you would force people to be immunized, it wouldn't be necessary to apply the same to computers. Vulnerable computers can't rely on herd immunity, and you'll have botnets whether or not updates are mandatory.
I was alive and working in the dark ages where the majority of the world did not patch their OS, and we should not be clamoring to go back just because occassionally the the light hurts our eyes.
I'm much happier in a world where only those that put in the effort to research how to block updates and then go through the steps can do so. They are much more likely to encounter info on how they should really think about what they are doing, and whether there are alternatives or partial solutions that achieve most their needs without being as extreme.
Please don't ruin the little bit of herd immunity we've built up.
How does that solve the issue described in the comment you're replying to? Are you comfortable leaving potentially critical remote vulnerabilities exposed for a whole month?
While you can argue it might be nice to have the option to keep the older backup, it’s also kind of a handy feature that I can restore to latest OS and not have to spend time installing updates myself, my data conveniently seeded into the latest software.
At any rate, iCloud is not “backup” in the traditional sense, it’s really “cloud sync” for user data. In that context it’s not really surprising that connecting a new device to iCloud and restoring pulls the newer OS version, given you never really backed up the OS data at any point.
not to defend them, but my experience with that particular issue is normally they put all your old desktop folder / document folder stuff in c:/windows.old
Is this incompetence the result of Microsoft being unable to retain decent engineers? I mean, who actually would want to work on the next Windows release? You’d have to be a masochist.
Hearsay: I've heard that at least Azure is having problems retaining and hiring talent. Apparently the platform was created in such a rush to compete against AWS that many of its core components are jumbled, unreliable messes, many people internally know this, and when Azure tries to recruit internally no one bites.
Microsoft already had its own empty password bug for the Xbox login. A badly placed trim call let you input a password consisting only of whitespace and it would pass as long as it had the correct length.
It's amazing to me. With the resources MS has, they could rebuild a new OS from the ground up and finally get rid of all the cruft and legacy issues in windows once and for all and still support legacy software via emulation, virtualization or even a compatibility layer a la WINE or WSL. Why don't they do it? Google is building fuchsia, Apple/NeXT was able to take BSD and build MacOS X, certainly MS can do it right?
And lose 90% of the user base (corporate users) along the way. I think at this stage they should just introduce a new OS for home users that copies the best parts of MacOS (non intrusive updates, UX, common task bar / top bar, single folder installs, unix/posix paths) and add the best parts of Windows (user space video card drivers, ???) and add some from VMS (keep file versions / purge). While at it, they could also do this on a much more secure way than before re-thinking the whole end user security.
Than I would be happy. Well, obviously this is not going to happen but I would have been nice. :)
They don’t want home users using a different OS either, because they might start asking for it at work. I’m pretty sure the only reason MS even makes a home version of Windows is to indoctrinate new generations.
I'm not familiar with MacOS 9 interfaces, but there are so many implementations of Unix out there (including WSL, Cygwin, Linux, BSD, and another dozen independent implementations) because the Unix interface was, on purpose, very simple. That is, in part, what allows Fuchsia and Darwin to be feasible.
Windows, on the other hand, is not. It has thousands of system calls which aren't really layered in any way. Wine and ReactOS have been at it for over a decade each and they still have "not yet implemented" system calls.
Microsoft has the "reference implementation" to compare with, but the amount of work is enormous even for Microsoft.
The idea that you can take the current state of modern desktop Linux as a consumer OS for the masses* is still just as crazy in 2018 as it always has been in years past.
I’m old enough to have seen a generation of Linux reviews proclaiming “this is the one!!” that can be the viable desktop OS for your family’s computers, and it never happens (the marketshare figures speak for themselves).
A consumer OS simply cannot ever require the average user to open a terminal window to fix, configure or install something, _ever_, to be a valid third choice for almost everyone who doesn’t have a Hacker News account. Windows and MacOS achieve this for the most part.
Google almost any kind of technical issue for, say Ubuntu, someone will suggest typing something in a terminal window that the average user doesn’t understand at all almost immediately.
* I will accept of course that ChromeOS is a notable exception, but this works radically differently for most users compared to most Linux distros.
I'm talking about technical people. Why would I care about popularity of Linux if it works for me and may be even better than Windows. It's not a consumer OS for the masses, that's a primary reason of its low popularity, that's correct. I don't agree that part about terminal, I mean, editing registry in Windows is not easier. It's more about investing huge resources into polish and testing, so for most people there are no technical issues which would require complex repairs.
Who cares? Way more developers and users devote time to improving the Linux experience than Windows or Mac. That's the only way in which popularity really matters. And it shows - when I switch to Windows, my Laptop fans start up and everything feels as slow as a slug. Because at this point, Windows is just bad software - and that's because Microsoft has recognized that the Desktop/PC thing is a declining market - and have reallocated resources accordingly.
I care - if you want a vibrant third party software ecosystem it helps if there’s a reasonable sized install base, especially when comparing to an install base that is often near enough a rounding error. This means my development OS has to find a reasonable audience beyond people like me. Vibrant doesn’t just mean “free” or open source either. For commercial software, there’s significantly less economic incentive to ship Linux support. It’s sadly a similar story with respect to hardware/peripheral support from time to time as well.
It’s nice when you can run things such as the Adobe suite without recourse to emulation/wine etc. I don’t just use my desktop OS for work.
I do see your point - I keep my big computer on windows for this reason, and for hardware support. However, I think the picture is more complicated than windows having a 'vibrant' ecosystem, and linux having no such thing.
My experience is that 90's-era flagship programs, like Adobe suite, Microsoft Office, and so on, generally don't have Linux support. However, for anything past that, Linux is simply way better. If you want something like a nice calendar app, a good music player, or a good calculator, or whatever, linux is way ahead.
Android isn't a desktop operating system and mobile device hardware continues to be a huge mess.
That doesn't stop you from buying a PC from Dell or building one from parts and installing Debian/Ubuntu/Mint/whatever-you-want on it. The percentage of other people who do that is irrelevant because the absolute number is still millions of people, which is more than enough to sustain a community and produce a competitive user experience.
I have an old computer with Windows on it and would turn it on once in a blue moon for the occasional thing that required Windows. It has been years since I've had to use it.
They technically have defaults, but when the difference for most distributions (e.g. Debian) is just checking a different box in the installer, it seems like a silly thing to complain about.
I think there's an assumption that the default DE gets more attention from the distro; it's more polished, and "just works" (or at least, something approaching the concept on Linux).
e.g. from what I remember, when installing xfce in debian, you get the ugly barebones defaults from upstream. Compare this to Xubuntu...
I made the switch from Windows 10 to Manjaro w/KDE about 2 months ago. Took about a week of ironing out some things and forcing myself to stick it out, but now I love it. I will also vouch for KDE being really good right now.
I returned to Windows after few years in macOS and I can't say anything bad about it. It works well. I know many people who upgraded without data loss. Sure, bug is bug, but don't overestimate the probability that it'll happen to you, it's not like MS releases untested software, just keep your backups.
So glad now I turned off Window's updates (because no matter what I did they kept installing when they shouldn't have).
I have been considering moving to linux for a while now because there's finally good alternatives for some of the apps I use, and I'm definitely going to start the move now.
I had all my user folders moved and this could have been me (and my backup drive just died too!). The user folders were actually part of the reason I disabled them. Every time, without fail, the moved user folders would get duplicated because Windows would recreate them at their default locations. I wouldn't be surprised if this bug wasn't related to that one.
The former is blown out of proportion because the vast majority of vulnerabilities are only locally exploitable, and the rest is mostly "visit shady site in IE with default settings" with a tiny bit of "hackers can own your system if you connect it directly to the Internet and don't do anything other than leave it on." My thoughts on the above are, respectively, "meh", "why would you use IE with default settings" , and "yes I definitely need this fixed." Unfortunately Win10 doesn't give you that choice.
You missed the very true point they made about overstated vulnerabilities. The odds of actually having your data compromised due to not updating for a few weeks or even months, is low. Particularly if your browsing and computer usage doesn't involve downloading dodgy software and browsing to shady unfamiliar websites, and you're at least half aware of sensible computer use, password and login use.
Poor analogy, and typical of the deferred-update paranoia crowd, thinking the worst and feeling exposed because Microsoft says you are in "critical danger".
A better analogy: You should keep your bicycle helmet on in the shower due to the slippery tiles and statistics of shower-related head injuries.
Or this...
Believe it or not, when you leave home without your umbrella, it may not rain. You know this, but you take your umbrella anyway. I choose not to.
The analogy was more than apt: a car crash is devastating, as is losing your identity, it's more likely than people tend to think, and the cost of protecting yourself against this devastating thing is relatively low.
If anything, the umbrella analogy wasn't great, because getting wet is a consequence of forgetting your umbrella, and that's far from as devastating as having your identity stolen. Further, you getting wet doesn't create a negative network effect like having your computer hacked does by adding your computer to a nefarious botnet.
This isn't Reddit, you can agree that the comparison was solid, but that the conclusion was still wrong. No need to go into Internet argument mode; we can have a discussion. For example, your helmet analogy in the bathtub is a decent one, except for the fact that it costs way more than running an update does to keep you safe.
Are you critically vulnerable all the time? No. Are you better equipped than Microsoft to judge which updates are important and which aren't? No. It's, as I said, the definition of hubris to think otherwise.
If you don't like how Windows does updates, don't use Windows -- lots of other great options.
Besides, the cost is absurdly low to keep yourself safe. If you're making the choice to run an un-updated Windows machine that's connected to the Internet, you are driving without a seatbelt, and not only are you literally risking your own livelihood, but you're also putting others at risk.
Try disengaging "worst case scenario" mode. You argument is hinged on seat belt catastrophe, loss of livelihood, identity theft, botnets, and general worst case computer doom.
Losing your livelihood because you didn't update Windows in a timely manner? That's beyond a joke. Besides, Anti-virus software would do a better job of preventing these worst case events.
The reason people have their identities stolen or computers hacked is mainly because of human error. People open attachments; people fail to identify scam emails and start engaging with criminals; people enter information willingly on websites they shouldn't, people put USB drives they find on the ground into their computers; people do dumb things and no "critical security update" is going to stop that.
Yes, forgetting your umbrella results in getting wet. Running with your logic, we need to extend the analogy. The rain gets on your watch causing it to malfunction and tells the wrong time, so you miss your train. You turn up late to the interview, you don't get the job, you can't pay the rent, you get kicked out, you're now homeless and living on the street. Really should have taken that umbrella.
It's not a joke, ransomware for example is real, and it's a huge problem. If you know anything about security you know that ransomware is on the rise and it's getting worse each year.
Malware infecting an insecure computer is not a "worst case scenario", this happens to millions of computers each year.
"Only" 6 million car accidents happen per year in the US, even though there were ~10 billion car trips over that same set of people and area, which makes the incidence rate 0.06%, so why bother with a seatbelt? It's "beyond a joke" to think you're going to get into an accident today!
This isn't a debate; keeping your system up to date is, by far, the best way to stay safe from a real threat. You can pretend it's not there all you want, but the rest of us are going to take care, and would appreciate if you didn't contribute to the sea of botnets. You make everyone less safe.
Be advised that you don't get to decide on whether this is or isn't a debate. You are attempting to re-frame the debate to suit your precarious position.
This debate as specified in the parent discussions, is about Microsoft enforcing updates on people without choice. This causes annoyance and even loss of work. The top comment describes Windows as an "an update engine that will sometimes also do computation for you". This is a significant and legitimate criticism that trumps your arm-flailing about malware (which as I said would be better defended with virus protection).
As the parent poster said, many of the vulnerabilities discovered are exploitable only locally, or under very specific and rare circumstances, yet are still flagged as "critical" and bundled with user interface updates.
Then you rode in on your horse, citing car accidents and seat belts, which really doesn't help in the context of having control over when system updates are performed. Nobody said "never update". It's about control over when those updates happen.
> ...but the rest of us are going to take care, and would appreciate if you didn't contribute to...
You're having a hard enough time speaking for yourself, please don't branch out to speaking for others.
Are they security patches, though? The difference between a critical safety update and the update that adds new things to Candy Crush is imperceptible to the casual user who just wants to get work done and will foster an unfair distrust of the important need for these updates. Additionally, the implementation is frustrating and buggy.
If someone updated OpenSSL from an insecure version on my machine, I'd probably never notice.
I hear you, but your claim that Windows Update is "frustrating and buggy" just doesn't mesh with my experience, so it's hard to relate to your concern. I don't think I've ever noticed Windows update running, except for the once-a-month or so times I've come back to my computer and it's been restarted. Hardly "buggy" or "frustrating".
Admittedly I don't think all Microsoft updates that get pushed out are security patches, but there are a lot of configuration options that give me control of how and when updates get applied. I find it hard to understand what the situation is that these controls aren't enough to work around any potential "critical" timeframe I might have.
Besides, for important stuff that must be up all the time, everyone knows by now that *nix is the way to go, right? This is not anywhere remotely new. Running Windows is implicitly trading off 100% availability for... whatever else Windows offers (gaming compatibility, for me).
My frustration with a personal PC is just turning one on the morning after doing updates and having to wait an hour before I could go back to work.
For silly reasons, though, I've had to update a lot of OEM Windows Home installations to new. Something like Ubuntu would have been better if starting from scratch but there was a lot of work to move the codebase to that once Windows stopped being something you could trust to turn on when you wanted it to turn on and turn off when you wanted it to turn off.
Anyway, this led to days of non-deterministic updating where sometimes it would fail to find the new updates until after I left, sometimes it would fail to install an update, and sometimes it would boot-loop. But always it would take longer than installing a new Linux distribution from scratch.
Now this is all anecdotal but even an installation-and-update cycle that goes well takes too long - seemingly because Windows has now mixed the worst DRM implications of SaaS and proprietary SaaP for most of its genuine customers. When I see people talking about how updates can be made to work as one would expect them to work with just a few steps (which seem to change following every major release), I'm reminded of playing with shakier Linux and FreeBSD desktop distributions as a teen. Now Ubuntu is the OS that 'just works'.
My frustration about this largely comes from any complaints about the implementation being lumped in the 'ignore' bin with the Luddites who don't care about the security at all. My very proprietary Chromebook updates painlessly.
I get all that, but your last line resonates most with me.
> My very proprietary Chromebook updates painlessly.
This is how my experience is with Windows. It's painless. Zero issues. It operates exactly as I expect, and I have no problems.
Besides, running Linux distros came with the veritable cavalcade of revolving "Why won't this basic thing work?" -> "Maybe this forum post from 3 years ago will help" -> "Okay now my mouse won't move." -> "Better reinstall the OS to get things working again" -> "Why won't this basic thing work?" and so on. Ubuntu is probably, to me, the experience you feel you're having with Windows.
Linux desktops feel like a hobby unto themselves, which may be fine for some, but is not what interests me.
I keep Windows just for gaming so I am immune to this issue. Hell, I even wish Windows installation completely break so I can try Wine.
What I don't get about Windows Update is, that it requires multiple reboots. Why? Also it took long time to process something on first login after the update. What are they doing?
There is a teacher in the house and their relatively new laptop is a complete POS for many reasons, but the windows side of things is an abomination. It has to be opened for a few a while each week to let it download, restart and generally make a fool of itself. If you don’t the software update debt compounds rapidly and it completely breaks.
It has never ceased to amaze me the abuse MS customers continue to tolerate.
Edit: Not that I'm suggesting Apple is any better. Proprietary software in general tends to exploit its users in various ways, if not initially, eventually.
Anyone can make a mistake in making a new software update. But Microsoft, like any proprietary software vendor, is denying their users the right and ability to discover and fix problems for themselves, or to hire anyone to do it for them; Microsoft reserves this right exclusively to themselves, and thereby do their users a tremendous disservice.
The data loss bug is just another example of the abuse MS users endure.
The majority of the abuse both Apple and MS subject their customers to result from lock-in of various forms however.
My clarification was intended to deter Apple fanboys from upvoting my statement as if it were intended to imply Apple > MS. They're both awful, use and support free/libre software.
I have been running Windows since 3.11 and have never had any of the issues with Windows Update described in this thread since the XP days. Don't think these issues are common, just the vocal minority.
I've never had a issue with Windows Update, but it can sometimes take hours and I like to imagine wth it's doing. My theory is that Microsoft has acres of test computers, so that when I run an upgrade they spin up a computer that match mine, install all the apps and drivers I have, runs the update, and runs some automated tests ...
I personally never used those folder for my documents/music/etc. It wasn't a problem until programs started putting their stuff in there. This is part of the "must-put-on-C:\" behavior you see in much win software that I loathe. A constant pain and reason that C:\ seems never to be big enough.
What I heard - this problem (removing files from folders like Documents, Downloads) happens only when you actually move storage of these. Yes, you can move Documents folder into D: and things will work just fine. But this is where this bug will hit you.
I moved my Downloads folder, nothing much to loose here, but I'll surely do a backup of everything before updating.
The only reason I use windows 10 is for gaming. The millisecond linux gaming is supported by all the games I love I will be paying whatever price necessary to drop windows for ever. I use OS X for work and find it a near perfect developer experience for my rather pedestrian use cases.
Windows 7 is pretty close to EOL now. Companies might not have migrated off it yet, but they're going to have basically no choice in short order. I doubt Microsoft are going to suddenly change how they handle updating the OS in the next year or so -- at the end of the day, there's no real competition for the business desktop -- so I expect we all have some fun and games to look forward to.
For what it's worth, I'm a home user still on Windows 7 plus a bit of Ubuntu. When Windows 7 finally hits EOL, that's it for Windows for me. After having had the displeasure of using family members' MacOS or newer Windows devices a few times, I'm out.
LTSB is literally the best operating system I've used, it's got none of the Windows app junk that the normal version is and it's super reliable because the only updates it gets are security ones. It's a shame they don't just release that as the main branch.
We're migrating the last of our 7000+ computers off of 7 by December. Probably only a couple of hundred left running 7. There will be maybe a half dozen left on 7 for compatibility testing and because of legacy software. But 7 is functionally dead.
Windows 10 Licensing terms § 6 says "The software periodically checks for system and app updates, and downloads and installs them for you. You may obtain updates only from Microsoft or authorized sources, and Microsoft may need to update your system to provide you with those updates. By accepting this agreement, you agree to receive these types of automatic updates without any additional notice."
I have a dual boot machine with windows 10 on a slow platter drive and ubuntu on a very fast SSD. I only ever launch windows to play games... and I hate it. I don't launch windows very often and as soon as I do it starts hammering the disk downloading and processing updates. Even before it tries to actually complete the update, it makes the computer almost unusable for an unpredictable period of time.
I did upgrade to Windows 10 1809 and fortunately didn't run into any issues. However, I suspect there is a memory leak somewhere. After running Visual Studio for a while, almost my entire system memory was eaten but the total sum of memory for the running programs don't add up to the amount of "In use" memory.
This is a common thing. I'm not such tech person to go deep into the details, but it's usually ok if you get back that memory when you close everything.
I had thison Windows 7 with Opera (can't remember if it was 12 or newer one already).
I hope they get it fixed quickly and I hope they listen to user feedback more... I just hope we don't go back into old ways of years between service packs. I for one enjoy the frequent fixes - much better than those "Service pack" years of having to deal with crap for so long.
it seems Windows 10 was where the tide turned on mandatory / forced automatic, while also making it pretty difficult to disable (and when you do disable updates other issues can arise that have nothing to do w the windows update service ,although pretty rarely )
I think the reason Microsoft decided to force these auto updates with windows 10 is due to the bad rap they got over the years for security and vulns ( in their defense part of that was just simply due to the insane marketshare windows enjoyed for so long, and still does for the most part , although to a lesser degree than before).
There's a growing community of users and developers who restrict themselves to Windows 7. Forever. Win7 EOL soon, so no updates from Microsoft? Fine. It's a feature. Updates from Microsoft are no good anyway.
Just yesterday I was commenting about how Windows developers are still adjusting to the corporate's latest business idea, rolling releases and hopefully TDD. Now I'm sorry to have been so kind. This kind of shit shouldn't escape testing. Touching files that shouldn't be touched? Really? Is that how much Microsoft cares about the safety of their user's data?
I'm still on the April update. Skipped July update after all the issues there - thinking I'll just wait for the October issue where they will surely not make another mess of it.
Is it possible to use a firewall (pfsense or similar) to block all access to the Windows update and telemetry servers? Or will Windows just stop working after thinking it’s offline long enough?
I wonder if Windows File History (provided it was enabled before the update) could have helped with this problem. These days, it's one of the first things I install on Windows machines.
I had been very dependent on Time Machine before I switched back to Windows a few years ago, and I'm kinda surprised that MS doesn't push File History the same way Apple did with Time Machine. I don't see it mentioned very often when it comes to backing up data on Windows.
Your comment doesn't add to the conversation. If your point is to call out just how disgraced MS has become (and how disgusted you are with it), you could give examples that show this kind of behavior is new and wouldn't have happened "when MS was mighty", or you could give further examples to show just how far they've fallen and use this story as further evidence of your point. All you've done is pipe in a trope without justification.
Also it's generally bad etiquette to meta-comment about being down-voted: it only exacerbates the "not contributing to the real conversation at hand" thing.
It does, actually. Thanks for being so polite with the response and being informative. I've seen comments almost exactly like mine on here get voted up quite a bit so I didn't think anything of it. I do see your point, though. I'll try to avoid it in the future. Thanks again!
If you're a company the size of Microsoft, "hard" just means "expensive." There is certianly no question that Microsoft is able to produce Windows updates that do not have these problems. Apple has been doing automatic updates for years - but we don't hear similar stories coming from that camp, because they put in the necessary QA effort.
My assumption is there's someone at Microsoft who gets a bonus as long as they keep presenting update graphs going up and to the right, and they don't care how much they mess up the Windows experience in the process.