I see a lot of articles that are dupes, but nobody ever says anything. Just curious - Are we all allowed to talk about something twice or not? Looks like plenty of people commented on this posting of the story, so I'm left wondering - what's the intention of this comment?
Are moderators responsible for pointing this out or just regular users? Who eventually marks something as a dupe? Is it in response to a comment like this?
Is this actually the most highly rated comment or did mods put it there?
Any user can point out that a link is a dupe or has been posted before. It's helpful for others to be able to see earlier discussions (whether or not it was in the past 12 months and qualifies as a dupe), and evidently moderators don't always realise something is a repost until a user points it out.
There are no hard and fast rules about what user can or should comment about stuff like this, but the mods seem to appreciate it any time people are helpful.
And when a post is marked as dupe, the mods will push the explanatory comment (either from them or another user who already pointed it out) to the top of the thread.
1) respect the DHCP settings that tethered devices provide (Android provides option 43/ANDROID_METERED) and NOT suck every data plan dry when on the road (maybe would be worth to expose an API to applications "the primary internet connection is metered, do not suck dry", given how huge any kind of update is these day)
2) give users the fucking option to only subscribe for security updates and not for the latest "feature" set. I know many people who disabled Windows 7 auto-updates after every other month MS would re-enable the W10 update nagware screen. This is way beyond hostile behavior, not even Apple goes this low. I went Apple once Win8 was coming out, definitely not going back until MS either gets a grip or makes W10 LTSB (the one on a "stable" track e.g. for embedded devices, without nagware, ads or other bullshit) available for general sale.
oh, and 3) provide a Windows 7 Service Pack 3 and installation media with all the updates preinstalled. Having to either upgrade by hand or mess around with ISOs is not exactly customer friendly.
Apple goes just as low, OS X asks me every day to update to High Sierra and the option is only "Later" and it can't be swiped away quickly like a normal notification.
I ran an iPhone 4 for until the iPhone 7 launch, I used to keep it on iOS7 because after iOS4 rendered my 3G unusable I knew to no longer update. Every single morning it would ask me to update, which I had to carefully dismiss. It would always download the update filling up my phone to the brim which I would have to then manually delete. If my phone was full it would give me another option offering to temporarily delete apps (Which it claimed would have data restored from iCloud but I knew they would not).
My Mothers iPad auto-updated locking her out of her painting app (Brushes, as used by David Hockney), I had to use a dodgy 3rd party app to extract her documents or they'd be lost for good.
At least Microsoft gives you options to downgrade and supports old OSes, unlike Apple who stops handing out the encryption keys.
I notice a lot of Apple users who update devices and OS religiously get defensive as if this stuff doesn't happen. I encourage them to try to live behind updates for once and see how bad the user experience can get.
They follow their traditional policy. A huge part of Apple's income comes from hardware. They will use every method to convince you to continue the vicious upgrade circle, whether you care about new features or not.
A customer that is satisfied with their current setup is a lost customer. So Apple's only hope is to make sure the battery is as difficult to replace as possible - because this component is sure to fail sooner or later.
You're talking about every other phone manufacturer except Apple. Once you buy an Android phone, the company has no reason to support you with security updates or OS updates. They have no reason to believe that you will buy another phone from then two years later.
Apple on the other hand still makes money off of customers -- app sells, services, music, media, etc.
> A customer that is satisfied with their current setup is a lost customer.
A satisfied customer is a customer who will eventually come back (want something new, lost or damaged device, or just general wear and tear). A dissatisfied customer will look elsewhere.
Re:2, I've never had a mac reboot on me without my explicit decision to do so. Contrast with the countless times Windows has fucked me over.
Scenario: hook up laptop to projector etc, make sure everything works. Step out for 30 minutes to chat with people coming to see your presentation. Come back, just to realize Windows did the good old "say Uncle in 5 minutes, or I'll start installing updates" thing.
I run an app called Don't Sleep to stop this exact scenario. Auto-updates is one thing, rebooting the computer (and killing everything running) when you are running a long-running experiment is the inverse of peak happiness.
The app just lies in the background, does nothing else than this. Suspend/hibernate works as it should, it just stops auto-reboots.
I wonder how Microsoft employees react whenever that happens in their own meetings. Do they just laugh and forget about the issue? Do they ignore it and quickly grab another computer? Do they use undocumented settings to fix the issue?
Exactly, I was surprised that TFA brushed away the terrible handling of updates, especially of late. "Sometimes, updates will annoy you" is quite an understatement when it involves having a whole different OS being installed without your consent.
I definitely do not tell people to turn Windows Update off but I also definitely do not try to convince to turn it on because I don't want them to hold me accountable if something weird happens. That's where MS messed up, turning updates on should be a no-brainer, not a compromise. It's easy to lose trust, it's hard to regain it.
Cool, but (for me!) this doesn't look like I could use it in any non-UWP app... and how can I specify a connection as being metered, e.g. in trains or buses where often enough there's only 200mb of data?
There's a way to choose the business branch instead of the comsumer branch, which might delay some of the feature updates. Iirc there was an option to delay features by up to 180 days, but that doesn't actually stop the updates though.
Here's how Windows Update "works" for me: "installs" an untold number of patches, does an untold number of reboots, then displays that the update "failed", and undoes all said patches, with the same number of reboots, to bring my PC back to where it was before the update.
Failures have generic error messages that don't point to any useful information from the (abysmally bad) MS forums.
So yes, it is disabled. Once every few months, I try again, and usually get the same result.
I have multiple backups of everything, so hopefully if WannaCry 2 hits, I'll survive. Or maybe not, but in the meantime, I'm sorry but I can't spend all my time watching my PC doing updates that don't update anything.
I have the same problem with Windows 7. "Applying updates" until just over 80%, then "Update failed, reverting changes..." followed by a reboot. It goes through this cycle 3 times before finally booting to the desktop. Each attempt takes between 30 minutes and an hour.
I followed all the instructions from Microsoft to reset Windows Update and ran their "Fix It" assistant multiple times. Guess I just won't be booting into Windows anymore, I only used it for a single game anyway.
Reinstallation is not the only way. I had this problem on a fresh install on a VM, meaning reinstalling would have resulted in exactly the same problem. The only way is to remove it and literally install a newer version of Windows, i.e. one with the offending update already incorporated.
I actually worked through an issue like this on 7, took about a day, and only after I found the correct directions online. There was an update that broke update, that’s when I turned off win update. The only reason I use the machine is to rdp to work because I couldn’t get the Linux vpn client to work, I’ll have to revisit that.
>Lost productivity to malware = 0hrs. Lost productivity to windows auto updates = 28 hrs. Sitting here right now losing time and money to an unauthorized update. I know how to avoid malware on my work laptop.
That's a bit like how some people (who weren't THERE) think the Y2K-thing was a non-event: they didn't see all the work that got done fixing things before the big day.
Sorry, friend but you are wrong on this. A simple change would fix the problem which is don't restart the computer! You can update anything and do anything when the computer is plugged in but please don't restart the computer or at least let users decide when they want to restart their computers. Even fedora does a better job with software updates. There is a checkbox when you turn off or restart the computer. If you check it, fedora will install updates and shut down/reboot. Why is this so difficult?
What do you mean "even Fedora"? Linux had updates figured out decades ago. They are applied in the background (so you can keep working), usually don't need restart, and if reboot is needed, it's just that - a fast reboot without applying any updates and similar. Because they were already applied, you just boot to a new copy of kernel + modules.
Windows always sucked at this, it just took a turn for worse in Windows 7 and 10. If I tried to come up with a more annoying updates system I really couldn't. It's incredible how difficult it is for them to pull their act together on this one.
Sorry, i didnt mean it as an insult. I use fedora every day but i imagine they have fewer resources than Microsoft does.
I am not sure about windows 7 and 10. We are arguably better off today than in the ActiveX days. It made no sense to require using windows internet exploder to download windows update.
If an update is ready, Windows (at least as of 10) offers an option to update and shut down when you open the power options menu. The random reboots and periods where the computer is unusable (while it gets updates ready) are still annoying.
I don't even know what to say to the guy you are replying to. Holy...just wow. Can you imagine trying to fix something when some of your users are just unwilling to let you try anything to fix it?
> Can you imagine trying to fix something when some of your users are just unwilling to let you try anything to fix it?
That's what happens when you 1) don't understand the problem you're solving, and push things that aren't appropriate updates through an update mechanism, and 2) lose user trust.
Do you really think that they don't understand what problem they are solving?
Compare the number of patches vs windows 7 or the number of cases that require a reboot since XP...they are working towards a better system. That being said, I really, I'm not trolling here, think that you can't make users happy in this age. People have been trained by interactions with crap companies, Microsoft included, to go from 0 to apoplectic immediately just to get a resolution. There's no benefit to being a happy user, you won't get your issues looked at...and there are always issues!
> Do you really think that they don't understand what problem they are solving?
Yes. Every single person who turns Windows Update off should be considered a critical bug, and their use case should be understood and fixed. The fact that they instead still use it to push anti-features means they still don't understand why people still turn it off.
If they started, today, focusing heavily on getting people to trust Windows Update again and leave it turned on, they'd have a massive uphill battle. But I've seen no signs that that's a focus at all.
Wow, man. Talk about back seat driving. Why do you think that they have spent over a decade refactoring the operating system into smaller components that can be installed and updated independently? What about peer-to-peer updating and all of the updates that not only don't require a reboot but don't require any user intervention whatsoever?
Something that is an "anti-feature" to you is someone else's (in the case of windows, several million someone else's) every day must have.
That's not what I'm referring to. I'm talking about things like misclassifying updates as "important" or "critical" rather than "optional" to get them installed onto more systems, which makes people stop trusting that distinction.
They've been doing that over the last couple of OS versions. XP to 7 to 10. Granted it's still not great, but it's improved vastly. It has a long way to go. I just think that it's really hard to please end users these days for a variety of reasons that don't all relate to software quality.
That's just not the case. I've been a system administrator for a very long time and I can promise you that updates on XP were much worse. Much, much, worse. XP was better than 2K, but wow is 10 better. It's a different world altogether.
They've had a problem of upgrades being painful/slow/difficult, and so people not doing the upgrades. They've fixed the second part by taking away the choice; the first is barely changed.
I think a lot of the hate for Windows Update is because of how slow it is.
I have a Windows machine I use for gaming. Its started about once a month and whenever I turn it on it is almost unusable for the first 30 minutes because its checking for updates and installing them. This is totally on Microsoft and their bloated update mechanism.
Windows machines need to be on for about half a day every week. I know no other device that needs this kind of attention, apart from helicopter gas turbines that are best kept slowly spinning.
Microsoft thinks just because Google can force-feed Chrome updates to users, it can do that with Windows too. It doesn't seem to comprehend that an OS has fundamentally more stringent availability and reliability requirements than a browser.
For example, my Chrome ("stable") right now just renders most new windows as completely white -- no address bar or anything else. Because Google decided to force-feed me a buggy version I never wanted or asked for. So I have to open 2-3 new windows before I get a working one. It's painful but I can still do that, or use Firefox/IE if all else fails. If this kind of crap happened with the OS I would not be able to use my laptop at all.
It's also a different install process. Chrome doesn't decide to automatically close itself to apply the updates, and they are applied fast enough that you usually don't notice unless something changed. Neither can be said for Windows - the reboots are often unexpected and the install can be lengthy. If Microsoft got it closer to Chrome (no forced reboots and applied without triggering a potential long "Configuring Windows Updates" stage), it'd be much less of an issue IMO.
Same with my work computers. They randomly decide it's update time and i sit spinning in my chair for half an hour. Then spend another half hour seeing if updating broke anything.
Windows update worked a lot better for me when there was the notification of updates. I shut my computer down every day, so I would update my computer every Tuesday when I turned it off.
Now, they have completely broken my work flow for staying up to date. There are no "active hours", if my computer is on, I am using it. No, I don't want you downloading updates without my permission, I am actually trying to use my internet without latency and bandwidth issues.
I understand I am not the majority of users, but it is very clearly the power users that understand windows update that are creating blog posts on how to disable windows update, so maybe to avoid the cobra effect Microsoft should cater to such power users even if the majority of people aren't going to use those features.
As it is, for me, a more effective work flow would be to disable automatic updates and just check every Tuesday when I don't actively need my internet or mind my computer rebooting. The problem is, I am fallible. If only there was some way to remind me.
Firstly, it'll keep prompting even if you choose "restart later".
Secondly, unlike most linux environments, it doesn't perform the updates which take effect next restart, it actually performs the update next restart.
That means if you find yourself needing to restart forgetting you've updated, you can find yourself suddenly having to wait a very long time before your computer is usable again.
They often take multiple 'restarts' to apply, typically you might have to wait the first shutdown, then when it boots back up it'll be "applying updates", then it'll restart again having done those updates. Occasionally you'll even get a third restart.
That's compared to 'nix applying the updates but them not having taken effect until a restart which isn't normally noticeably slower than any other restart.
I generally allow rebooting after each update is downloaded. I haven't had any case where it did not take a long time, and putting off the reboot until after a second set of updates has downloaded doesn't seem to make it significantly worse.
Eh. I regularly update my Windows gaming PC and every time it takes a long time to restart and apply updates. Far more than macOS and Ubuntu. And this is not new behaviour.
And then Windows decides you've had enough time to reboot. And you have to click "Ask me again for reboot in 4 hours", because 4 hours is the maximum time the system will allow. And repeat this every 4 hours.
In Windows 10 it's even worse, you have to define off-hours when you're not using the PC, and in those hours the device will reboot itself if it feels like it. Don't worry, the applications you had open will be restarted, surely no data can be lost.
Edit: Windows 10 even has the configuration panel "Restart Options," which tells you "We'll show a reminder when we're going to restart. If you want to see more notifications about restarting, turn this on".
I've also had lots of trouble with failing updates.
You’re a student who needs to take notes for a class. You open your laptop to find that the battery has died. No problem. You’ll just plug the charger in. But, unbeknownst to you, it had downloaded an update silently the last time you used it. Now that it’s booting up you’ll get nothing but a Windows Update screen for the next 15 minutes.
You’re at the doctor’s office waiting for an appointment. You open your laptop for a minute to check your mail. Surprise! Windows is booting up with an update. The nurse then calls your name and you have to carry your laptop around with the lid open like a jackass or risk bricking it.
* Windows's reboot nag screen is way more insistent and naggy, OSX just has a notification in a corner going "there are updates available", Windows has a big dialog front and center, which comes back frequently
* Windows updates requiring reboots are significantly more frequent than OSX's
* Windows will eventually refuse to put things off and reboot on its own, IME OSX won't
* The Windows update process takes ages, and there's literally nothing you can do with the machine during it
Having both Windows ans OSX personal machines, updates to the Windows one annoy me much more than OSX's. Though to be fair the W10 experience is still a significant improvement over the XP and W7 days (I haven't had an update repeatedly fail yet).
> Though to be fair the W10 experience is still a significant improvement over the XP and W7 days (I haven't had an update repeatedly fail yet).
I am on the other side of that fence, managing about 100 machines across all versions W7-W10 and Server 2008-2016.
Win7 boxes are by far the most stable desktops, in the past year I have had at least ten win10 systems blow up due to updates, stuck in and endless loop of installing at shutdown and reverting at startup. A few weeks ago two stock server 2016's with nothing but SQL Server installed outright died to a windows update (unbootable).
I am never upgrading my personal windows machines past windows 7.
Recently I pulled my laptop out of my bag and tried to turn it on to copy CD with MRI results. I was greeted by "Keep you computer on. Windows is updating."
Good that it turned out I really didn't have to copy that CD then.
I mostly use my PC for gaming, and work on osx, so both of these are game-related, but:
- The update popup often tabs you out from full screen applications. For exclusive full screen games, it often takes a couple seconds to tab back in, so in any kind of skill intensive game you're now way behind.
- The download/p2p upload mechanism does not respect 'active hours'; updates will happily hog your entire bandwidth and destroy your latency.
You cannot use the computer during the update process. The update process is incredibly slow may get stuck for hours on some machines and sometimes it may not even work at all!
For me, updates are painful because they don't work. They just make you waste your time and then roll back the machine to where it was before the update.
Indeed, it's apples and oranges, but not in the way that you think.
An OS connected to the Internet is secure given a good firewall that blocks all incoming traffic. Firewalls are a solved problem and ship with every mainstream desktop OS.
Browsers on the other hand are directly exposing the user to the web, being the primary attack vector for mallware and viruses. This issue is made much worse given that browsers download and execute JavaScript code locally, the potential for remote exploits being enormous. And historically speaking their attack surface has been much greater due to the proliferation of plugins, like Flash, Java or Adobe Acrobat, which have been exploited again and again — thankfully we've gotten rid of them.
The OS can help somewhat in securing the browser or any process of course, but it's never foolproof on mobile devices, as can be seen by the dozens of iOS exploits used to jailbreak it and it's a pretty weak protection for the desktop — a compromised browser on the desktop means you're pretty much screwed.
This is why the browser has to be the ultimate sandbox. Because it's directly exposed, because it executes code loaded from random locations on the web and because it's been abused by plugin makers, as everybody wants a piece of it.
Unfortunately, that is an understatement. If you are using a Windows computer at home, it's one thing. If you are responsible for a company network of 80+ clients, Windows updates (pre Windows-10, at least, I have no experience with Windows 10, yet) are a little bit like Russian roulette.
It's one thing if an update breaks third-party software; I suspect this usually means the third-party software did some questionable things begin with or is just crawling with bugs (I am looking at you, Siemens!).
But if Windows updates break functionality like, say, communication with a WSUS, or booting properly (I could go on and on and on...), it is my responsibility to at least do some research how this month's update may affect my users, instead of blindly installing anything Microsoft throws my way.
I wholeheartedly agree that keeping systems up to date is very important. But unless Microsoft gets its act together and makes updating as painless as on, say, Debian or CentOS, I am going to have mixed feelings on the subject.
I think it's great that Microsoft are pushing updates but it's slowly wearing me down. Keep in mind I'm 100% on board with getting security updates out as broadly as possible as fast as possible.
But for the last two days Windows Update has gone rogue and started gobbling up CPU. GOG Galaxy has gone nuts as well, I uninstalled it but I can't uninstall Windows Update. I can't even stop Windows Update, it'll go into the "Stopping" state but ... no dice.
It's like literally everything is coming for my CPU [1] for updates updates updates. It's a 6700K so there's 8 threads at 4GHz being used 60%...
I'll probably re-install Windows 10 over the Christmas break and cross my fingers.
[1] https://imgur.com/a/8hZXE (Windows Update is Service Host: Local System (3) along with Update Orchestrator Service and Remote Access Connection Manager.
I've used W10 since it's release (August 2015) on many devices, and it only keeps getting worse. There's no way they do this unintentionally. At work I primarily use Linux, but also have a W10 laptop for testing. I'm used to the fact that the OS can eat all of your CPU and SSD (50-100% SSD usage for 30min? WTF is it doing?), you have no idea when it stops and you have no control over it. Last time I was unable to use the laptop for a good hour. Sometimes longer.
I normally have a lot of time for Troy Hunt, but on this one I'm not sure I agree with him.
If Windows Update provided only essential updates for security and stability by default, and if it did so transparently so everyone could see exactly what was being done and why, and if it did so with minimal interruption to the user's real work, he would have a decent argument. But none of those things is the case.
Look at the comments on the article, or here, or on countless other forums since the Windows 10 fiasco started. Heck, look at Troy's own acknowledgement:
I've had Windows Update make me lose unsaved work. I've had it sitting there pending while waiting to rush out the door. I've had it install drivers that caused all manner of problems. I've had it change features so that they work differently and left me confused. I've had it consume bandwidth, eat up storage capacity and do any number of unexplainable things to my machines.
I've seen those things too, and more. I've seen unfortunately timed updates cripple a sales team right before a crucial demo, months in the making, that was supposed to close a £1M deal... in a small business that closes perhaps 2-3 such deals a year and relies on them to pay everyone's salary. Not much point worrying about encrypted filesystems if your business went bust already.
The fundamental problem here is that Microsoft is no longer trustworthy. They have demonstrated, repeatedly, that through both negligence and malice they will break systems that install their updates. The Microsoft that some of us trusted back when we bought our Windows 7 machines is not the Microsoft of the past few years, but we're stuck with those machines now, so we have to find the least risky path forwards taking into account as many potential problems as we can. It is far from clear to me, on the evidence to date, that accepting all of Microsoft's updates by default is safer than rejecting all of them by default.
Initially Windows 10 felt fresh and nice, combined with all the other 'nice' things Microsoft have been up to...i was happy. Being able to ssh from windows cmdline...excellent stuff. But...
...with every stupid update, and after every boot up Windows insists on settings, programs and games it wants you to have. Should i have to curate my own powershell script to disable and remove some of the shit that gets forced on me. I paid for my OS, why do i get to suffer like this. Microsoft please sort this out, you're pushing me away. You know, looking at the Steam for Linux game list now, we're getting close to a point where the Gamer in me might see an opportunity to leave.
I just hate the moving platform that Windows has become. Windows 7 did plenty of updates already and they could take forever or incidentally break something, but an installed system would essentially stay the same. As of Windows 10, anything can happen at any time. You install a system, do nothing and the next day it has Candy Crush on it. (Yes, you can fiddle with the registry, but WTF??) New functionality is pushed and with it, default behavior changes. The most annoying one that comes to mind was default printer management. From one day to the next, the default printer started changing. Every time there is one more thing to remember to turn off or work around, but it won’t be enough, because at a random point in the future, Microsoft will decide you want it differently. Sometimes they ask—Edge opening to show some release notes and conveniently using the opportunity to offer to make itself the standard browser—but not using the standard browser in the first place already pisses me off and that question is really one too far. Recently a family member clicked the wrong button, making Firefox disappear, resulting in a panic call because they “lost” their bookmarks, logins, etc. /rant
There are many improvements since Windows 7 that I can appreciate, but those practices—together with the increasing privacy violations—are a complete shame.
On the other hand python virtualenvs, npm, docker containers almost never get updated and people almost religiously fight for the ability to freeze packages at specific versions.
Well, yeah, obviously a bad idea. But the real question everyone in "security" should be asking themselves is "if the idea of having better security is such an easy sell to even the vaguely-clued-in, what have we implemented so poorly that people still use insecure practices? Or go out of their way to disable security?"
The article's point here is that no matter how much windows update might suck, you still need to use it. And that's the problem with security people in general. It's not like they "think their shit doesn't stink" it's that they everyone must put up with whatever level of stench because security is just that important. Which gives them zero incentive to reduce the smell. They'll probably just blame the developers for fucking up the distribution mechanism the same way they blame developers for having the temerity to write bugs.
Unfortunately, the impression I get is that "the security community's" answer is that users do things like disabling windows update because security hasn't been sanctimonious enough towards the unwashed masses, and we should just get on with taking away all of end users' control over their systems for their own good.
It continues to amaze me that Windows is so terrible at system updates when pretty much every Linux distro out there has done it in a more-or-less sane way since day 1. openSUSE doesn't require sitting at the shutdown and startup screens for hours when I install a single update. Ubuntu doesn't forcibly reboot itself if I leave it unattended. CentOS doesn't disguise new "features" and nagware as critical security updates. Slackware doesn't burn through my mobile data constantly downloading updates. Even Android seems to do a better job than Windows, and Windows Update alone has existed for longer than Android has at all.
If Microsoft knew how to do system updates in a way that wasn't an absolute fucking pain, then I'd be a lot less tempted to just turn off automatic updates on Windows.
If Microsoft et al. want me to leave Windows Update enabled, they either need to push way less updates (security updates only track) or at least make the install process faster (which would probably be helped by not pushing new features). Losing two days of progress on a video encode[0] due to a reboot when "you aren't using your PC", or pulling out my laptop to do something time-critical to be greeted with 20 minutes of configuring Windows updates, means I'm turning it off ("download and notify to install" Group Policy setting). These are real problems; malware is only a _potential_ problem (largely mitigated by keeping offline backups).
[0] Fairly ridiculous x265 settings on a laptop CPU, as I'm not keeping the source files so want to ensure optimal quality.
You see a lot of this kind of thing in HN threads as well, (including using older unmainted/vulnerable browsers), where there is presumably a subset of users who have very strong feelings about automatic updates and are also blind to the security implications of disabling them.
Keep your machines and software updated with the latest patches people. Keep your parents and non technical friends machines updated with the latest security updates. Don't ever tell them to disable it because your heavily customized windows 7 setup broke a little bit one time after a huge windows update.
Security patches are a good thing, but reseting privacy settings, reinstalling Candy Crush Whatever/Cortana/Skype, re-enabling spy/adware, changing the UI EVERY.DAMN.TIME. is definitelly not good.
There are so much abuse people can take before they start considering the actual malware a lesser evil than Microsoft's malware-like OS.
My Windows box is running 10 LTSB with wuauserv disabled. I keep zero important stuff there, most of my gamesaves are synced with cloud servers from the game's developers (Overwatch and Elite: Dangerous) or from the store (Steam and GoG), so I can wipe it out any time with no real losses.
The important stuff (taxes, documents, pictures, etc.) are all on a notebook running Debian that is mostly kept cold.
Speaking on Debian, Microsoft could learn a LOT from them. Specially with regards to the strict policy of not adding new features to a stable version.
One of the best things about LTSB is cumulative updates. I get 1.5Gb of security and bug fixes every month or so that quietly installs in the background. Like it was in Win7. And when its done it just sits there waiting for me to MANUALLY push the restart system button. Without ever nagging about it.
> I get 1.5Gb of security and bug fixes every month
That's a joke all by itself. Not even a rolling release distro like Debian Unstable or Arch produce that volume of patches in a whole year...
Windows has two major problems in regards to updates:
1. It's utter inability to update files that are currently open by programs. All Unix and Unix-likes can handle deleting/moving/replacing open files gracefully by keeping a reference to the old file in memory. Windows can't, so the only way to update the most used DLLs is by rebooting.
2. It's a monolithic system, with so many cross dependencies, it's almost impossible to make small, punctual updates of independent packages. Hell, Unix was 23 years already when Windows NT 3.1 was finally released, MS used to develop and sell Xenix, yet they learned nothing from those.
It ridiculous how inept they are handling updates. If they ever ask me how to do it properly, I'd advise them to throw the whole idea of Windows in the trash and start again from a BSD (or maybe buy Solaris from Oracle). Slap an improved WINE for partial, best performance compatibility and a full VM for lower performance, full compatibility. It worked well for Apple while transitioning from "classic" MacOS to MacOS X, it could work for MS, as long as they don't screw it up completely.
I actually agree with the person commenting the original article:
> The "security updates" situation reminds me of organized crime's protection racket: Either pay us to "protect" you or bad things will happen. In the case of automatic "security" updates -- and not just Microsoft's -- we're compelled to pay in computers and programs that are corrupted with unwanted new behaviors. If you don't accept those, well then your computer will be insecure. So "pay up" or else.
The thing I don't understand is the insistent nagging and it's persistence that a restart NOW is really needed and then often forcing you to restart.
This all worked perfectly on windows 7. It downloaded in the background and would install whenever I restarted the system myself. No nagging, ever. Of course, I get why some people might have problems with automatic downloads or automatic installation on restarts, but I feel it was still worlds apart from the current windows 10 behavior and a good compromise between staying up to date and getting annoyed. So why has this actually changed? Why does it need to nag all the time now and force-restart in the middle of the workday? Who gains form this?
In the newest AWS Workspaces images, Windows Update is disabled. I'm having to enable it manually on newly-deployed Workspaces. (Probably a bug that will get reverted on their next refresh.)
The biggest issue is reboots. They interrupt workflow. They stop the user using the computer for several minutes: the updates are applied after the reboot instead of being applied and then switching to the new binaries, the user has to save all their work manually, the user has to restart their applications manually, and the reboots often make new updates available requiring further reboots... Reboots are a DOS attack. Don't DOS attack your users.
The same goes for "feature" updates that break the existing workflow.
Having used a Chromebook, I hope someday desktop operating systems can become as easy to update. All you really ever have to do is restart and things are up to date. Mostly similar with Android on the Google Pixel phones. Google is oddly ahead of the curve with making updates really painless.
Of course, inconvenient or not, it's pretty hard to deny that disabling updates is a stupid proposition.
Holy fuck, CNET actually tells people to turn off Windows Update?!
I'm starting to think published tech advice should be treated like legal or financial advice. If you give out stinkers like this and they turn out to be violently harmful to its readers, you are liable for it.
Microsoft doesn't get off free —they've been cocking this up consistently— but turning off WU is antivax level stupidity.
A Windows Insider Here, and while I'm enjoying the Ubuntu Subsystem on my machine, I somewhat regret opting in. I hate waiting for hours just for getting some negligible updates & patches for Windows Defender AV or a software I don't use like Paint 3D, Mixed Reality Viewer, etc . Still, I like showing off my fancy terminal to other Windows noobs.
I'm pretty happy with dual booting. Restarting the machine into a solid Linux distro on a modern machine takes maybe 30 seconds (often quicker restarting back into Windows), and it's nice to get MS out of my face for a while. The whole subsystem thing always seemed like the worst of both worlds to me.
# of times I've lost Valuable data because of malware: 0
# of times I've lost valuable data because of Windows Update: ~10
# of times malware has made my computer unbootable: 0
# of times windows update has Made my computer unbootable: 2
Windows Update likes to kick in when I'm playing online, making fps drop to 10. Tried all the buttons to make it ask before downloading stuff but it didn't help. My last punch was disabling the Windows Update service.
Please don't disable windows update for gaming. There is a gaming mode (which really ought to be called normal mode) which should help. The only other stipulation is you must keep your computer plugged in, turned on, and connected to the Internet as much as you can so windows can do its thing while you're not using it.
It's inadvertently disabled for me because my C drive is full (and apparently, in 2018, it's of utmost import that multi gigabyte ephemeral files are cached on the partition that is most likely to be the fullest among all drives).
On Pro (IIRC it's not available on Home), you can disable the installation of updates via Group Policy, and on Home there are likely non-standard ways on doing it.
For those who uses windows primally for gaming in its home protected network, it's better not to update windows forever, because a new patches and fixes only make windows slower.
I find the Windows Update in windows10 pretty good :-) Not as good as OS X update mechanism, but it's miles ahead of what we had in previous Windows :-)
I'm reading this tread and thinking "am I the only person who's not bothered by Windows Update?" It just does whatever does, and occasionally asks me to reboot, which I do. And life goes on.
As a Sys admin i can say only F YO(( very much:
- delay windows update by 2 days
- see what happens
- ohhh no 1% users blue screen 10% auto update on
- watt for final path
- still blue screen of dead
- wait for new windows path
- install on 10% more machine do snapshots
- wiat for new pathes
- install on 10% machines
- ok its now works without issue
- install on 100% PC
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14340286