You’ve clearly not had an update trigger when you were trying to present something, join a meeting, or simply do a quick restart after installing a program and get hit with a 10min “updating windows; do not shut off”
I’ve had to create GP edits to prevent it from happening because it most certainly does.
Even then MS is fantastic at throwing up MFA reauthentication mid meeting or forgetting to throw it up at all and leaving you shadow logged into Outlook/Teams where it will appear functional from your side, but you will it receive anything until you close and reopen the apps.
They’ve had these issues for years and never prioritize fixing them.
Update small system components (packages) and load the old into ram until rebooting; I don’t think this is possible on windows.
A/B Image Based Updating; Android and a few Linux distros have this; probably one of the most stable methods.
Live boot updates/Kernel-space Hot Patching; found mostly in Linux servers, and distros with a patched kernel; used mostly for security updates which is what windows is doing here, but Linux can do feature updates this way too.
Windows is very lazy about reboots. Minesweeper changed? Better reboot.
Chrome also got infected with this laziness. It used to be that you had to restart chrome once a month, now it’s almost every day. Among many other reasons, that’s why I’m happy to be using Firefox again.
The chrome OS is method is pretty cool having a mirrored partitions the one not being used gets updated if there’s an error the other one gets booted and reverted
If Microsoft actually pulls this off I can finally stop using 3rd party firewalls to avoid the forced reboots! Revolutionary on Windows part. Meanwhile on Linux. They already know the assignment. (generally)
"Colonel updates require a reboot, but just normal application updates do not. And most system updates do not. I partly misspoke about Android. I should have been more clear because I was referring to the A/B partition scheme, but yeah, to run the new system does require rebooting.
I love linux and been using it for decades, personally and professionally, but no, linux doesn’t have “hot patching” the same way as that article describes it. At most it can live patch the kernel (and only few distros actually use that), but definitely not for the last 20 years, and definitely not running processes. However, it does usually restart background processes after an update without requiring a reboot, but in my experience, often times the system becomes unstable after several such updates and rebooting is effectively necessary (though not forced, and that’s why I like it).
Yeah, the security in knowing that if you’re way top busy right now, you don’t have to install or even download any updates. And you don’t have to worry your system will suddenly become crashy, glitchy, and unstable because it decided on its own to install some things and let you know you can reboot whenever.
It’s so freaking annoying I have to use Windows at work. It takes liberty to do what it wants and then my workflow gets hosed.
I get that there is security, but if you force updates, I should have some kind of notice or “hey, we need to install mandatory updates. You can schedule in the next 24 hours when or you can get them over with”
For the home user, this is a giant PITA for which I wholly blame MS.
For business machines, I lump the company IT in with MS, because there are Policies for this stuff they should be managing.
I say this as an IT person responsible for things like this. The first rule is don’t fuck with user machines during business hours, the second is to allow them to postpone stuff as needed.
Can only imagine getting an update, then a reboot, while I’m on an outage call trying to get a critical system back up. And hoping my laptop comes back up and my VPN still works.
Can’t say I’ve experienced forced reboots on either my home or work PC; I always have gotten an option.
Do you have to ignore updates for a while until they’re forced? I’m pretty quick with updating when I’m notified- typically that evening when I’m done with the computer.
I’ve been building my own windows PCs since 99, using every main version of consumer Windows except ME. Never been forced while in the middle of something.
With Win10 and later (I honestly don’t remember with Win 8), by default updates happen in the background, and will be applied and a reboot scheduled.
It won’t necessarily force a reboot, but it can reboot when you’re not there. I’ve had updates with reboot happen when I was away for 30 minutes, on a machine I was setting up and hadn’t yet configured policies.
The updates quietly happening in the background are still a problem because they can’t be paused or canceled and they use a lot of sysrme resources to get done. And when they’re complete, your experience is less stable till the reboot.
I usually notice them when my work computer slows down and things start having more bugs than usual. My work computer has very respectable specs
Current versions of windows literally let you set an update reboot window. So set up the times you use it, and then forget about it and let it install whenever it wants.
I honestly, and sincerely, do not understand all the hate Windows gets with current updates. The alternative at the moment is “hope the user remembers to update” which we have seen in action and which does not work.
Is it annoying when you don’t set things up properly? Sure! But that’s a failing on the users side.
I’ve been using Windows for decades, and the last time I had it unexpectedly reboot for an update was years ago. Because I’ve actually taken the 10 minutes to understand the system, and how to configure it to do what I want.
I haven’t used Windows 11 interestingly, so I don’t know if they’ve changed their update habits, and I wouldn’t be surprised either way. Windows 10 is the last edition I’ve used. Since Windows 8, I had plenty of issues with Windows and Microsoft, and it got worse every release. I’ll bullet-form my personal complaints at the bottom of this page.
My final straw for Windows 10 in my personal life was a forced restart, and I had all my update settings where I wanted them, and still, I lost a really important session to that reboot. Since I was pretty comfy with Linux, I went that direction. Since then, Linux has gotten more user-friendly and plays videogames, way more than Mac. It’s still not something I recommend to most people, but probably someday, it’ll get to a Mac or Windows ease of use.
At work, most of us haven’t been migrated to Windows 11 from Windows 10, and I still get updates installing in the background a lot, causing issues even on our Windows servers. I’m sure our ops team can tune these abhorrent update defaults, but it’s just a frustrating experience nonetheless.
I think a prompt or reminder could go really far to let the user configure that during setup.
Here are some of my complaints over time:
Force installs and bloat. Inclusion of bloat by default. Reinstallation of bloat on updates.
Resetting of my settings and registry edits regularly.
Ads on the desktop
Needless nagging to use their other bullshit like Onedrive. You think it’s good? Great! Let me uninstall it and use the cloud providers of my choice.
Forcing an inferior start menu without a choice to use alternatives or the old ones.
Windows tracks insane amounts of users’ data and actrivities, and I do not trust them to admit to all the tracking they do but the tracking they admit to doing is already mind-boggling.
Windows 10’s forced upgrade and Windows 10 popup scandals were completely dishonest and disgusting, and I have not heard enough apologies for what they did. This personally affected me and broke a bunch of crap before Windows 10 was even well-baked.
A history of forced updates. A history of forced reboots. A history of lost work. This is me and my family. It sounds like Windows has reverted some of their worst practices, but the precedent is set, and I’ll never trust Microsoft to stick to it.
The Windows seeker’s scandal personally affected me. They put all sorts of beta garbage on my computer without telling me. This caused a loss of files. They’ve made a resurgence on their unethical behaviors in the browser space. I have faith they’ll continue to revisit their other old habits. Look up Embrace-Extend-Extinguish and it’ll get you started. IE was their old baby. Edge is the new one.
Buying and killing small companies and studios, such as Rare, a bit like EA had done
Moving away from some of the nice things earlier Windows versions did, like a start menu with a neat list of organized and searchable programs.
Having just 1 UI experience that isn’t super customizable and breaking 3rd party UIs.
Fullscreen popups and nonsense over nothing
Microsoft’s anti-competitive behavior has been a factor most of my life. They still push the boundaries of anti-competitive behavior to the Nth’s degree. Again, that reading on Embrace-Extend-Extinguish will give you a taste of their BS.
Having fewer features and techs than Linux that I like to use, such as specialty filesystems, IO schedulers, process schedulers, swapping systems (ZRAM/ZSWAP) etc. Being stuck on NTFS (are you kidding me?) REFS is too little too late and you can’t even boot off it
Way worse IO/Disk performance and features
inferior memory management
Overall, I don’t want to do business or help in the success in an organization I do not like by offering up my data, watching their ads, and using their products less than necessary. I like some of the things Bill Gates has done, but it doesn’t change any of my views on this.
I felt like clarifying that the updates issues I faced were the last straw and that if anyone was interested, I listed the other reasons I quit working with them and never looked back. That’s why I wrote all that at the bottom.
Even if Microsoft does some things right, they still have a history of doing things wrong and have a bevy of other dark patterns. I do not trust them to get it right anymore. They could go back to their old ways tomorrow and I wouldn’t be surprised. Thankfully, it’s not my problem except at work
Win 11 Pro user here. It doesn’t care what time you set for updates, it’ll do them when it feels like anyway, or annoy the piss out of you with notifications.
It might be that I don’t leave the PC on all the time, I just hit sleep. But still, it shouldn’t strong arm me into updating after a day or two of the download. Also hate having to RegEdit Edge off the thing after each one.
Windows lets you pause updates for some time, maybe a week or so, after that you’re going to take them whether you like it or not. Granted, you had a week or so to prepare, so it’s ok to some extent, but don’t tell me Windows doesn’t force you…
Hmm, good to know, I’ll have to try, just out of curiosity. Is that available on Windows Home or just Pro? Anyways, it’s not something that many people would easily figure out, so for most non-technical people they effectively cannot disable them.
you still need to reboot your linux machine or relogin if you updated a process that’s currently running (and in most cases most system processes can’t be just restarted) (…and otherwise you’ll just stay at the old version bit with new data which might cause some instability)
yes, there’s kernel hot-patching but it only affects the kernel, only viable for minor and security upgrades, does not come pre-configured on most consumer distros and not really suitable for home use.
I love that the Razer installer pops up during windows intital setup. Seriously, chill out Razer, I don’t want to sign in to you while I’m bypassing the Microsoft forced sign in.
This is an odd comment. I use a Razer keyboard and mouse and I’ve never experienced this. What products are you using?
Edit: Thi said, I HATE how Razer and Nvidia make you sign in to update things. Like, REALLY hate that. They even force two factor on us. Like… Why the fuck do I care about account security for either of those?
You can update Razer by signing in as Guest and not actually logging in. I think it is the same with Nvidia. They just eant you to think you need to log in.
I didn’t looking it that much, but while “continue as guest” is a prominent option in Razer Synapse, I was unable to get GeForce Experience to let me install updates without signing in.
It’s whatever though, you can install and update to relatively recent Nvidia drivers with the CUDA winget package. Now that I think about it, around 95% of my Windows software is installed through winget these days. I’m a big fan.
I run a main box that I still dual-boot between Linux and Windows, and the rest of my boxes are Linux. I’m definitely skeptical of Microsoft’s drive in adding these tools other than to try to unseat Linux dominance in server settings, but for real, some of the stuff they’ve been adding is pretty tits, like winget for example.
I don’t think there are malicious intentions behind winget. Aside from the fact that it’s objectively useless for server configuration, Windows Server lost to Linux in terms of performance per dollar a long time ago. The target use case for winget seems to have been spinning up new employee PCs, but I’m not confident that it would be wise to use it for that.
It’s also shockingly simple for a package manager. Nearly all of the “packages” simply download the software’s installer from the official website and silently execute it. You can see (and add to) all of the package configs here. It’s literally a GitHub monorepo lmao
It seems like Microsoft is going through a real phase of “I made this” and they’re adding all these features that were core to Linux since damn near Linux’s inception.
Multiple desktop instances, sudo (which isn’t the same sudo…), and now trying to mimic the rebootless update.
TBF, this one’s up to Sony as they published Until Dawn. Supermassive hasn’t kept any of their other games off PC, as they published them with Bandai Namco/2K instead of Sony.
First launching back in August 2015, this narrative-focused horror title pulled in an all-star cast including Hayden Panettiere, Rami Malek, and Peter Stormare.
The team at Ballistic Moon is also expanding the game’s scope with new locations to explore, as well as “unexplored emotional parts of the story,” and a third-person camera option.
Until Dawn will also have a new soundtrack on PlayStation 5 and PC, with the new score being composed by Mark Korven, who has contributed to films like The Witch and The Lighthouse.
Outside of Until Dawn, Guerrilla Games’ Horizon Forbidden West is coming to PC on March 21, 2024, bringing Aloy’s second adventure to a new platform.
I’ve played Until Dawn multiple times, and it’s one of my favorite PS4 games from last generation alongside Bloodborne and The Order 1886.
Choosing to use Unreal Engine 5 and expand on the story is a bit strange, and it seems like this version of Until Dawn will occupy a weird place between being a remake and a remaster.
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Microsoft Edge has … an updated name in its store listings. What was once simply known as “Microsoft Edge” is now listed as “Microsoft Edge: AI browser.”
windowscentral.com
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