Windows 10 Will No Longer Auto Install Feature Updates Twice a Year (windowscentral.com) 104
Microsoft has announced that starting with the Windows 10 May 2019 Update, which will hit general availability late next month, users will no longer be forced to install new Windows 10 feature updates as they become available. From a report: This comes after feedback from users who have had countless issues with updates breaking programs, losing files, and installing at inconvenient times. Microsoft has been working hard to improve Windows Update, and while the system is better than it was at launch in 2015, it's still not perfect. Now, users will have the option to not have to deal with feature updates when they are released.
What Microsoft is doing here is splitting Windows Update in two. The normal "check for updates" button will now only function for security and monthly patches. Feature updates now get their own area in Windows Update where the user can initiate the download and install process for the latest feature update available. If the user doesn't want to initiate that process, they don't have to. The user will be alerted that a new feature update is available every now and then, but at no point will the user be forced to install that update, as long as the version of Windows 10 they're currently running is still in support.
What Microsoft is doing here is splitting Windows Update in two. The normal "check for updates" button will now only function for security and monthly patches. Feature updates now get their own area in Windows Update where the user can initiate the download and install process for the latest feature update available. If the user doesn't want to initiate that process, they don't have to. The user will be alerted that a new feature update is available every now and then, but at no point will the user be forced to install that update, as long as the version of Windows 10 they're currently running is still in support.
Still in support (Score:5, Insightful)
So they'll more quickly remove support for older versions to force updates?
Re: Still in support (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Still in support (Score:4, Insightful)
How about they change and allow the user FULL control over what updates they do or do not want?
Who do you think you are to demand this? Do you think you own your personal computer and software on it or something?
Windows 10: Less abuse? Or different abuse? (Score:1)
Joke: You don't understand Microsoft. Microsoft an ABUSE company, not a software company. "Windows 10 Will No Longer Auto Install Feature Updates Twice a Year" only means they have found other abuses they like better, like forced advertising.
My opinion, shared by many others.
Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made. [networkworld.com] "Buried in the service agreement is permission to poke through everything on your PC."
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How about they change and allow the user FULL control over what updates they do or do not want?
You can have that and it is very simple as it has been with past versions, Microsoft will tell you to "simply have your Active Directory admin make the desired changes in the group policy for desired behavior." Things have been heading this way for several versions and things that used to be settings have been moved increasingly more into the control the Active Directory.
Simple IF (Score:2)
You are on an enterprise version of Windows, in which case it is the enterprise administrator that is given almost full control, not the user.
Oh, you are not an enterprise administrator controlling a vast network of PCs, but just a normal user? No, you haven't got control yet. And you may never have control.
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You are on an enterprise version of Windows, in which case it is the enterprise administrator that is given almost full control, not the user.
Oh, you are not an enterprise administrator controlling a vast network of PCs, but just a normal user? No, you haven't got control yet. And you may never have control.
Totally agree. Don't think I'm in favor of the situation, just explaining it as how Microsoft has explained it to me.
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They've done the opposite, if you've been paying attention. They extended support for 1607-1809 and made the support period longer for the fall releases on a go forward basis.
BTW, this patch Tuesday is the last patch for 1607 Enterprise/EDU. If you haven't upgraded, you need to ASAP or move to LTSC.
Re:Still in support (Score:4, Interesting)
Windows releases used to be good for **10 YEARS** (mainstream plus extended). IMO, this was one their few big advantages in the server market over linux options, where even LTS linux distros only tend to be good for 3 or 4 without forced updates.
Now, even in the best case, you only get two years, and that's after they extended Fall (H2) releases up from just 18 months.
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Windows releases used to be good for **10 YEARS** (mainstream plus extended).
But you had to update them along the way right? Like they do still support Windows 7 but can you get the latest security patches if you haven't even installed SP1?
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That seems to be obvious, yes. They will not stop fucking their customers with a wirebrush. They just may paint it pink and decorate it with some (fake) silk bows.
Re:Still in support (Score:4, Informative)
So the best you can do is update to the latest in Fall, where you won't be bugged again for two years... and at that point, if you skip the intervening updates and go straight to latest, you get two more years. If you don't want the current Fall update, you'll be bugged again much sooner.
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So they'll more quickly remove support for older versions to force updates?
Yes and good. I mean Slashdot needs to be collectively checked into a psych ward. On one side they complain about phones not having support or security updates and being insecure spambots, then on the other side they dare complain that desktops are provided automatic security updates. It seems the only thing anyone is happy with is leaving the user in charge of their own security which is precisely how the internet turned into a cesspool of malware in the first place.
Re: Still in support (Score:1)
Iâ(TM)m fairly certain the complaint with mobiles is that updates are just completely unavailable. I canâ(TM)t use tools I donâ(TM)t have, and those tools shouldnâ(TM)t be taken away from me either because most people are stupid or lazy.
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I want to be in charge of my own security, I want to know what's being installed, I want to control when it's installed, and I damn sure want to control when my machine is going to reboot. However, I'm an IT professional. My mother, on the other hand, is doing well to turn the computer on, and I want her updates to be automatic without any intervention. Those two scenarios are not at complete odds with each other-if Microsoft would just set the default to automatic updates and give us the option to only run
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Still in support (Score:2)
Do corporate IT support and you will know exactly why we wine.
Here is one example this week. Our WiFi is crashing and phones are blowing up about system freezes. A rogue Windows 7 upgrade decided to always fucking set wifi as default even if Ethernet is plugged in?!!
So wifi waps have hundreds of current connections now! No way to disable this besides uninstalling the wifi driver 6000 times??
Citrix is essential for 1/4 the workforce so if everyone defaults to wifi over Ethernet it takes it down.
One just one
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Do corporate IT support and you will know exactly why we wine.
I usually just beer, but wine is good too.
Finally (Score:3)
You still deserve a kick in the privates for even doing the auto install in the first place. And Win 10 in general.
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And even the auto-install of twice a year updates was better than the near-forced install of Windows 10 from Windows 7.
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_One_ kick? You are far too generous. Kick them until dead, then burn the body. And that would be letting them off lightly.
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I don't want to kill them, I want them in pain.
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You don't get a thank you thou.
Yeah, that would be pretty rare. Usually you can expect either a thank you or a thank thou, but not both.
I'm disappointed by this news (Score:2)
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Not all of us are subs.
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It took how long? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It took how long? (Score:4, Informative)
while the customers have been pushing back that they didn’t want these features
Huh? As far as I can tell customers have only ever wanted to be in control of updates and wanted their system to be stable. Who are these strange customers you apparently know that actively don't want the features that come out in the updates?
Re:It took how long? (Score:4, Insightful)
So if I understand this correctly... (Score:2)
.... windows will stop slowing down you system or causing annoying delays after it has informed you, or not, that an update is available?
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No. They're offering to attempt to reduce the rate of annoying delays, not to stop them.
Also, unexpectedly deleted files will be reduced, and you'll have more say in when the unexpected deletions happen.
"But I can't update, I haven't finished the TPS report!"
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The sheer incompetence of MS is staggering (Score:2)
I mean, I would understand such a move if this was some newcomer that had been on the market for a year or so and was trying things out. But MS can still not do any high-quality engineering despite all the decades of experience and the shitload of money they have. Why again is their stuff popular and not an obscure 3rd rate-choice as would deserve to be on merit?
Re:The sheer incompetence of MS is staggering (Score:4, Interesting)
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the 'feature updates' reset the baseline for future updates; with far fewer updates to wade through, microsoft never had to actually fix windows update's horrendous performance issues that plagued every preceding version the longer they were out. the forced upgrades twice a year was microsoft's "fix" for that.
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They have too many engineers, and at least 50% of them are Scotty from Star Trek, forever lying about how hard anything is.
They've had all sorts of MBAs try to fix it. They even tried letting Balmer smash it until worked. But it still didn't.
It may not be fixable. This is why when you start a company they say it is very important to choose and implement an effective company culture at the earliest stages.
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Dunno but I kind of theorize that they had some sort of massive talent exodus circa 2005. EVERY product since then has been a half-assed unnecessary recreation of a previous reasonably hardened product. And every one of the new products seems to get abandoned before being fully completed, in favor of more rewrites.
Windows 2000 (to some extent XP) and Office 2003 were badass, and did everything their modern counterparts do on comparably minuscule amounts of RAM and CPU.
Vista was so-so, 7 kinda stabilized i
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Makes sense to me. Personally I plan for a dedicated gaming machine (nothing else, no email, no browsing) on Win10 and some non-networked VM for doing office, but on a Linux machine.
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Because they have a monopoly and a stranglehold on the computer market, thanks to all manner of malicious business decisions that Bill Gates made when he ran the company. Inertia took care of the rest.
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That kind of holds with the theme. The company started out quite corruptly with IBMs own lawyers colluding with Wee Willie Gates Parents to cheat IBM investors out of copyrights, for a piece of the action, really scummy stuff right from the get go.
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gweihir inquired:
Why again is their stuff popular and not an obscure 3rd rate-choice as would deserve to be on merit?
Because, up until late last year, it was impossible to play marquee games - especially MMORPG's - on Linux, and OSX only runs on Apple's overpriced, proprietary hardware.
Nor would Adobe's DTP and graphics programs run on Linux. The same is true for Avid's ProTools DAW. Those are the industry standards for graphics and audio recording professionals.
And, yes, I'm aware there are perfectly cromulent DTP, graphics, and DAW programs that run very well on Linux - but those are not the programs in
Just make LTSC avalible to the public (Score:2)
From 6 to 18 months, bring back 5+5 (Score:2)
The user will be alerted that a new feature update is available every now and then, but at no point will the user be forced to install that update, as long as the version of Windows 10 they're currently running is still in support.
Well they support new versions for 18 months. In practice this means you can skip one update since you'd have to from last day of support to a brand new version to skip two. When we know how many are/were perfectly happy with 10 year old XP/Win7 releases it's Microsoft moving ten steps forward and one step back. There's nothing so drastically changing about an OS these days that you need new versions every year.
precursor to charging for new features (Score:2)
This is obviously step one to charging for new features. Next step will probably be to split out some very special feature improvements while continuing to give the bulk for free.
I'm not a total MS fan and ran Linux on my main machine from 2015-2018, but I do like the near zero-hassle updates and feature installations. It is a 32GB, i7 quad-core with SSD laptop that has aged well since purchase in 2014, but has Optimus mobile graphics (NVidia / Intel combo with Intel driving the display) which has very bad
Re: precursor to charging for new features (Score:1)
Linux is free if your time has no value (let's burn together hahahahaha!)
Re: precursor to charging for new features (Score:3)
How about: they both suck for different reasons.
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The Windows forced-updates problem motivated me to move my main machine to Linux (it had been Windows since oh 2005) - currently Manjaro/KDE - and to convert my Windows machines to VMs which I run on it via VirtualBox.
bumblebee/mhwd-gpu meant my laptop was using Intel's graphics, except when I explicitly tell it I want to use my GPU. Well, since it is always plugged in to AC power, I removed bumblebee, and now use the Nvidia GPU all the time (I've turned off integrated graphics in the BIOS).
I haven't e
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I probably confuse / stress the issue somewhat by connecting an external 32" monitor to the laptop and running dual screens. This required more changes to eliminate the severe tearing that you get from Optimus on the external monitor.
It was somewhat stable with bumblebee as you indicate until I hit Ubuntu 18.04. After that update, getting it back to the point where I could switch it on and off again took a lot of web searching and trials for a couple of days.
Regrettably, it never fully worked. For some reas
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Modularity (Score:1)
The whole problem is the lack of modularity.
Windows should not include a 3D paint program. It should be available in the Windows Store.
They should be able to upgrade the control panel without upgrading Internet Explorer.
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You need to buy system center to fix this problem. You need to install the updates with system center.
At Some Point - you'll have to install features (Score:1)
On the other hand, twice now the feature update has messed up my wife's machine, forcing me to either rebuild or back-out. At least on the last update I was able to recover from a prior point in time.
She is so fr
Update EVERY week (Score:1)
Am I one of the few? (Score:2)
I'm guessing there isn't many people out there that modified their registry to prevent automatic updates? I've done it, and only install the updates that I want... It's extremely nice not to be forced to run updates