Microsoft Promises Windows 10X Updates Will Take 'Less Than 90 Seconds' (theverge.com) 76
Microsoft is revealing more about its Windows 10X operating system today, which is designed for new dual-screen devices. From a report: The software giant has re-engineered this special variant of Windows 10 to install and update the operating system a lot faster. This will allow Windows 10X to download an OS update and simply switch to it at reboot, all within less than 90 seconds. That's a big difference from what we're used to with Windows 10 today, which involves the OS downloading an update and then applying it and rebooting. This takes minutes even on high-end systems currently, but Microsoft has developed a special state separation in Windows 10X to improve this radically.
Microsoft discovers ZFS boot environments. (Score:3)
This takes minutes even on high-end systems currently, but Microsoft has developed a special state separation in Windows 10X to improve this radically.
From BSD:
https://forums.freebsd.org/thr... [freebsd.org]
Oracle:
https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23... [oracle.com]
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Android takes well under 90 seconds on my 4 year old Pixel XL too.
Re: Microsoft discovers ZFS boot environments. (Score:2)
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Has Apple come up with any naming conventions since Jobs died?
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Their $1.4T indicates how the market values them (up from $350B when Steve Jobs stepped down). Apple Pay is going to be the biggest payment network (just like how iTunes took over music sales, the App Store
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Apparently they don't need creative energy anymore. They made $12B USD from Apple Pay alone in the last quarter.
Windows RT 2.0 (Score:1)
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Uhhh...actually Win 10 Phone got updates a hell of a lot longer than damn near every android OEM, the wife's Win 10 phone got updates right up until the EOL which was nearly 3 years,
3 years of updates is pretty typical for android devices now, especially Android One devices.
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Except that those phones are expensive, this is nice to know.
I paid $250 for mine off contract, there were cheaper ones too.
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Yeah the wife's WinPhone cost just $100...how much is an Android One phone again? I mean sure if you blow $600+ on a phone you can get a lousy 3 years of updates, wanna guess what the biggest market for phones is by far? Sub $300 and on those phones give it up, you aren't getting shit but what it came with.
I paid $250 for mine, same company (nokia) has a cheaper android one model for $159 though. They may go even cheaper than that I just didn't dig very far.
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Well sure. It's way easier to accomplish that when you're updating only a few dozen devices.
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Uhhh Windows 10X runs win32 apps. So its support is all of Windows' app library from all time.
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Skype on non-Windows machines (Score:2)
only on the rare occasion when I need to participate in some company meeting on skype for business, and I get the hell out of there as quickly as possible.
Keep in minf that Skype for Business has nothing in common with Skype except it's branding. It is actually a rebadged version of their Microsoft Linc, formely NetMeeting. It's built around industry standards such as SIP/SIMPLE. There are some people who have had relative success playing around with other SIP/SIMPLE plugins [sourceforge.io].
As for the other chatting platforms of Microsoft - the plain Skype and Team - they have Web Apps which rely on official standard (such as WebRTC) and the web app is their official app on
Unbelievable! (Score:1, Funny)
Can you really install Linux in 90 seconds?
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...said no-one who's actually used Linux in the last decade.
I think pthfdr was referring to "customizing" it. Configuration, using default settings, takes seconds (if that).
Customizing YOUR desktop for the perfect experience takes a bit longer ... I'm currently going on 15+ years :D
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Well, so do you with Win10.
Only that with Win10, you have to do it anew with every update after MS reverted to the "optimized" configurations.
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Re: Unbelievable! (Score:2)
But yeah, mod parent up.
Missing details much? (Score:5, Interesting)
OK, there's nothing about having dual screens that warrants a derivative version of the operating system so what's the real story here?
Re:Missing details much? (Score:5, Interesting)
Device lockdowns required by Microsoft licence agreements so you can't install a competitor's OS.
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The cover just got blown on some WWII-era CIA backdoors so now they need new ones?
Because they need to reboot (Score:2)
Because they desperately need it.
Windows is a 30 year old operating system. A lot has changed in that time. The core of the Windows 10 OS is still Windows NT which was an amazing OS back in 1990, but it's now seriously dated. Windows is an agonizingly ugly mash up of old and new UI, it's frankly quite hideous.
Microsoft has been trying to reboot Windows since around about the time Apple released MacOS, they worked on Windows Vista for half a decade which was suppose to be what Windows 10X is. Vista was i
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In this case they are just lying. Sure they will have downloaded the file and set aside a new directly for those updates to load instead of the originals at reboot but you will still be stuck in no where land as the system registry takes 10 minutes or more to rewrite itself. As always the problem with windows is the system registry an extremely bad idea tied to enforcing copyrights rather than anything to do with efficiency. Get rid of the system registry and Windows updates would be far faster, as simply a
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Your reply has very little to do with what I said. I was saying they've been trying to rewrite windows for years.
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You missed the important part here. Windows 10X is described as having a "read only" operating system. That means booting from a file, similar to how you can boot an OS from a CD. So when Windows 10X downloads an update that's just a replacement boot image file.
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Microsoft is like the US Auto Industry in that it's slow to respond, slow to change and spends way too much time fighting change instead of embracing it.
Change happens.
LoB
Yeah right (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll believe it when I see it. Besides, why even require reboots? A good OS shouldn't require a reboot after every update. Going on like 3 decades now and they have yet to figure that out.
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Well they still needed some ways to distinguish themselves from Linux...
Re:Yeah right (Score:4, Informative)
The reboots are required because the file locking system used by the Windows NT file system (NTFS) doesn't allow unlocking a file in use and if you attempt to force unlock an in use system file, the kernel crashes. In order to get around this issue they have to replace the file system entirely. The tried doing this with WinFS but, they found there were just too many legacy ties to NTFS to replace it without breaking half the software for Windows. It would be Windows Vista all over again with even less obvious customer benefit.
Re: Yeah right (Score:2)
Windows 2000 was the breakthrough release where they focused on reducing the number of reboot events... down to a mere 50!!!! About 20 years later we're still suffering from reboot events for seemingly every minor application install or update too (on top of the OS reboot events). User space issues like this can surely be improved. I only use a Windows in a VM these days, but all the rebooting still annoys the f*** out of me. I pity the Windows users who frequently make the mistake of shutting down thei
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That has nothing to do with why Windows needs to reboot after updates.
The problem is that, like Linux, when software is running it's often not trivial to just shut it down and restart it. For example if you need to update the filesystem driver while the filesystem is in use, or patch the kernel while the kernel is running... It's possible but it's not easy or very reliable when you have a vast number of different system configurations in use.
So the safest option is to just reboot. It's not nearly as common
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I reboot my Linux systems for updates regularly. There is usually no reason to go through the hassle or carefully figuring out dependencies and restarting services... possibly missing one and then putting the entire system into a funky state.
"Have you tried turning it off and on again" is the most reliable way to resolve issues and unless you are running some mission critical system without any form of failover, it's very very rarely worth the labor hours to execute a system security update without rebooti
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This is why you have a package manager. It will both restart services as required, and allow you to update only that which requires no reboot, or that which will require a reboot. You seriously do not have to labor at all to upgrade without rebooting; you just do a normal update and it's done, with services restarted and everything.
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No. Just no.
At best, it just temporarily hides the problem.
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You're generally correct, but there are cases where it's necessary to force a cold reboot, such as where some service has locked up the system so it's not responsive (or even an application - normal Windows can still be effectively frozen by some). Turning it off and on (or using a reset button if you have one) does force the system into a consistent state.
As far as Linux goes, though, my experience with Mint has been that once the new kernel package is assembled (by the package manager) and ready for use,
Um, not quite (Score:1)
download an OS update and simply switch to it at reboot, all within less than 90 seconds
Download? Um, nope. No way am I going to be able to download an update in less than 90 seconds over my 300bps modem. Oh wait, I mean my very crappy 100Mbps cable connection that has 300bps throughput. Same difference.
Update? Well, maybe, depending on how they do things. A naive way is to essentially create a new set of core files and settings and once they are "all set and ready to roll" boot to it the next time. This is similar in concept to booting to a different Linux kernel. There are other ways
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Clearly from the context they mean you can be up and running with the new OS update 90 seconds after it's downloaded, effectively booting the package directly and skipping the "installing updates" phase.
aand how many? (Score:4, Funny)
less than 90 seconds... and there will be 1,000 of them a day?
Why not on Windows 10 non-X? (Score:2)
If this is such an amazing improvement, why is it only on systems that aren't out yet? Why can't they migrate this to existing Windows 10 systems?
And no, I'm not paying to upgrade to Windows 10X.
I'm no longer a Windows user (Score:2)
With the ending of support for Windows 7, I've moved completely to Linux with Mac for on the road demos and presentations.
Unfortunately, I have to have Windows 10 machines for product compatibility testing. Hopefully I won't have to get some Windows10X machines.
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They want to reduce the number of variables and only support a small set of hardware variations. My guess is that you won't be able to buy 10X unless you're a major OEM with approved configurations.
Every major Windows 10 update (the 2x per year ones) do a full profile migration. Basically, they back up the old OS, back up the user profile, lay down the new OS from an image, and then migrate user data back into it. 90% of the time is spent just moving data back and forth for no reason.
If they were to repl
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Like ReFS?
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Might explain why they removed it from Windows 10 and want to test it separately rather than push it out as the new filesystem for 10. And I'm sure they wouldn't want to duplicate Apple's APFS debacle.
Either way, the Windows 10X emulator is out now. I'm too lazy to download and analyze a copy of it, but it's in the Microsoft Store.
Congratulations (Score:3)
Congratulations, Microsoft. You have graduated to 1991-era upgrade performance.
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"* In early 2020, I tried to visit a US newspaper's website. This is the message that was dumped on me: "We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time.""
Web anonymizers are your friend.....
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You sound like a racist, climate-change denier, and not a particularly smart or brave one. You deserve all the "problems" you "have".
So sorry goodbye (Score:2)
How many serial updates will be required at once? (Score:1)
They just forgot to mention that you'll need several of these 90 second updates in a row. The first one is 90 seconds, the second one will be 90 seconds too. You'll do a fresh install a year after 10X comes out and you have 90 seconds X 12 updates to apply. And oh, you needed new cpu microcode this time, that is going to take a while...
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That doesn't fit with what the articles say about Windows 10X. It has a read-only OS. So effectively it takes a leaf out of mobile computing and just has a boot image. The update is just a replacement boot image, so no "installation" is required. The 90 seconds is the reboot time to start with the new 'rom' effectively.
Nah (Score:2)
Microsoft ALWAYS promises that updates will be better in the next version.
I distinctly remember claims for Vista, 8, and 10 where MS said updates would be faster, more reliable, and most updates would not need a reboot.
LIES!
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I don't understand the problem with rebooting. That said, however, I do not understand why Microsoft updates take 45 minutes to download (but actually download only during a few seconds of that time) and then spend 90 minutes piss fucking around with the "getting ready to think about installing", "getting ready to install", "thinking some more about getting around to installing", "installing" (but not using CPU or doing I/O for about an hour), "getting ready" (and still using no CPU and doing no I/O for an
I'd rather Microsoft promise... (Score:2)
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You like being lied to?
Hey, I'm the last one who'd kinkshame...
Given how often I STILL have to reinstall.... (Score:2)
Honestly, most of the updates are already quick (Score:5, Informative)
The other big killer is driver updates which automatically install and disable the current driver, but fail to pop up a message saying the computer needs to reboot to finish installing updates. This is actually the most common support call I get from friends and family. Usually the printer or network card stops working because of this. All that's needed to fix it is a reboot, except Microsoft screwed that up too. A shutdown and restart no longer constitutes a reboot. Shutdown in Windows now defaults to a quasi-hibernate state [windowscentral.com] instead of a true shutdown. To reboot, you have to select the reboot option, not shutdown. But most people figure a shutdown does the same thing as a reboot. So when I ask "Did you reboot?", they answer yes because they did a shutdown and restart. And I have to have them clarify if they did a reboot, or a shutdown and restart.
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When the OS is in a pending reboot state, it does not do a hybrid shutdown.
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As I understand it, if you hold down the shift key when doing a shutdown, it does not go into the "hibernate" state. This can be useful if a driver is corrupted during normal use e.g. if sound suddenly stops working in headphones. After such a shift+shutdown, all new copies of drivers are loaded from storage, instead of the wonky driver that would have been in the "saved state" created by a normal shutdown.
You do need to be cautious though in advising people to do so, because if you hold the shift key down
Microsoft seconds (Score:2)
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Great comment. MS minutes often resemble NFL minutes, including the occasional clock reset.
So Windows is finally going Linux? (Score:3)
Have been using both Windows and Linux Mint for years. Linux and Android appear to apply updates immediately because they spend a lot of time in the background when a new kernel or kernel-level drivers are released building a new system image, then switching to it when rebooting. Sounds, in principle, exactly like what Windows will do with 10X according to this article. The downside, compared to Windows, is that a fair amount of disk space is needed for the temporary files - though since Mint uses much less disk and RAM than Windows to start with, it all comes out in the wash.
Normal Windows seems to insist on patching in place requiring exclusive access to the disk by the update service(s). One would think that by now MS would have figured out how to do it the Linux way, which is quicker for the user (who can work on other things while that background stuff happens) and more reliable. Patching in place with exclusive access probably needs less RAM and disk space, though, so in limited-resource situations it might be better than the Linux method. .Net *is* an issue. Even after all the patching is done and you've been able to log back in, it has to go through the NGEN process for seemingly forever in background, which drags foreground activities down to a crawl in many cases. It's not a picnic in Linux, either: a major Mono update in Mint can easily take an hour or more (in background, but in my laptop it makes everything else kind of jumpy in operation). At least in Linux it usually doesn't require a reboot then continue the process for another hour afterward; it's one and done.
And will break what? (Score:2)