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Windows Microsoft Operating Systems

Microsoft Will Continue Supporting Windows 10 With Yearly Feature Updates (arstechnica.com) 31

Along with the release of Windows 10's November 2021 update, Microsoft announced that it will no longer provide Windows 10 updates twice per year. Instead, it's switching to a once-per-year schedule. As Ars Technica notes, "This is meant to sync Windows 10's update schedule with Windows 11's, which is also going to receive major feature updates once per year." From the report: Microsoft hasn't committed to the number of yearly updates it will provide for Windows 10, but the company will support "at least one version" of the OS until update support ends in October of 2025. Microsoft is promising 18 months of support for Windows 10 21H2, so it seems safe to assume that we'll at least see 22H2 and 23H2 releases for Windows 10. For businesses using Windows 10 Enterprise, version 21H2 is also a Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) update and will receive update support for five years instead of 18 months. While more Windows 10 updates will be welcome news for anyone who isn't ready to move to Windows 11 or whose hardware doesn't support the new OS, it's not clear what "feature updates" will entail for an operating system that has been replaced.
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Microsoft Will Continue Supporting Windows 10 With Yearly Feature Updates

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  • by ebonum ( 830686 ) on Tuesday November 16, 2021 @09:48PM (#61994939)

    I don't want new features. I want the existing features to work correctly. For starters, it would be nice if on a new Dell with a new install of Win 10, File Explorer didn't crash. After all these year, the most basic stuff still doesn't work.

    • by exomondo ( 1725132 ) on Tuesday November 16, 2021 @10:29PM (#61994995)
      Or something as simple as file sharing, how can copying a file from one Windows computer to another Windows computer on a local network be so fucking flakey. Takes forever to just "discover" things, no progress bar when you type in a remote share address and then nonsense messages like "the password was incorrect" or "the pin was incorrect" that are the result not of the password being incorrect but some other "policy" error and then followed by "the remote network share could not be found".
      • Why fix local free file sharing when they can nudge you to their paid cloud sharing?
      • by imidan ( 559239 )
        Here's one of my favorites: Grabbing a file from an explorer window and dragging it somewhere, say to the desktop, and inadvertently passing the cursor over a remotely shared disk (or even an idle spinning disk on the local machine) listed on the sidebar of explorer. The whole operation is interrupted while Windows tries to connect to (or spin up) whatever drive I've accidentally waved my cursor over. It takes forever. Fix: wait until I let go of the file over a remote disk to try the connection.
      • File sharing? What is this 2001? Use the cloud man. /s

        Sarcasm aside, Microsoft has made file sharing the traditional way intentionally difficult. I'm not surprised in the slightest that you're having difficult with it. It was much easier on Windows 2000.

        It's not broken, it's working exactly as designed.

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Or something as simple as file sharing, how can copying a file from one Windows computer to another Windows computer on a local network be so fucking flakey. Takes forever to just "discover" things, no progress bar when you type in a remote share address and then nonsense messages like "the password was incorrect" or "the pin was incorrect" that are the result not of the password being incorrect but some other "policy" error and then followed by "the remote network share could not be found".

        Indeed. I do that by using scp from cygwin to my Linux box, and then scp from the target to pull it. Or by memory stick. What a sorry excuse for an OS.

    • To translate the title, "Microsoft will only fuck up Windows 10 once a year instead of twice a year as previously".

      Of course the best number of "feature updates" per year is zero, but at least this is a step in the right direction.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      I don't want new features. I want the existing features to work correctly. For starters, it would be nice if on a new Dell with a new install of Win 10, File Explorer didn't crash. After all these year, the most basic stuff still doesn't work.

      Well, me too, but the thing is that MS does not have the skills to get features to work well. MS is fundamentally incapable of doing solid engineering. All they can is do new features, sometimes replacing exiting ones that worked fine with something that works worse, see, e.g. the "Ribbon" crap, the stupidity with the start-menu, the "tiles" stupidity, Win11 being about 10% slower (WTF?), etc. At the same time, while MS filesystems universally suck, the VFS layer has horrible performance, task-scheduling is

  • I was pretty sure Microsoft said Windows 10 would be the last version of Windows, that they would simply keep updating it, and I was right [theverge.com].

    "Right now we’re releasing Windows 10, and because Windows 10 is the last version of Windows, we’re all still working on Windows 10.

    Of course, at the end of the article it says there could be versions 11 and 12, so maybe Microsoft took that comment to heart. Even ArsTechnica hedged their bets [arstechnica.com] on Microsoft's "last" version of Windows.

    • Now that I have migrated my hobby programming to subtantially .NET Core, I am finding mainlining Linux, with BSD systems for security purposes, a much more realistic thing.

      An issue is that I have a lot of games. Not all of them will run on linux or BSD for sure, even with a tuned wine. Pointing at a growing number of steam games supporting linux is not an argument as I am talking about an extensive existing collection. I also consider windows-in-a-VM to be running windows (I dont buy into that misdirectio
      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        I maintain one Windows 10 box for gaming. No email, only gaming web-browsing, no MS-account. Everything else (except some work stuff that requires me to use the abysmally broken "office" atrocity) I do on Linux.

    • by xlsior ( 524145 )
      They just realized that planned obsolescence is better for business - it's much harder to force people to pay for a new copy when the old one looks & sounds the same. Having some versions of Windows 10 being "more equal than others" when it comes to receiving security updates is far more confusion for laypeople to grasp than when they simply slap an '11' on top of it first.
    • I never believed that Windows 10 would remain the last version of Windows. I distinctly remember thinking to myself, "it'll be the last version of Windows right up until the next guy in charge wants to make a new splash with Windows." I mean, "forever" is a very long time. It was hard for me to imagine that, 20 years from now (yes, it's still going to be around then), Windows would still remain Windows 10.

      I'm also betting that by Windows 12, someone at MS will get tired of "boring" version numbers, and w

      • I'm also betting that by Windows 12, someone at MS will get tired of "boring" version numbers, and we'll get another named version of Windows.

        Perhaps Windows Panoramico this time? Although if it's a continuation of the Windows 8/10 mess I'd call it Windows Salato.

  • by williamyf ( 227051 ) on Tuesday November 16, 2021 @10:24PM (#61994983)

    Remeber that Win10 2019 Enterprise LTSC (and only Win10 2019 LTSC) wil be supported until 2029.

    All those companies with thousands of desks can (and many will) pay extra for the priviledge to keep using obsolete machines with Win10.

    But that also means many patches will be developed by and avaliable to Microsoft from Nov 2025 until Oct 2029, and could be released to the public, the restraint being commercial more than technicall.

    Us consumers do not matter to Microsoft from a Windows Standpoint. We are not in the 90s anymore Toto.

    So for us consumers, beyond 2025, to keep using our current machines, the options are:

    * Go to Win11 if the HW you are using in 2025 supports it.

    * Stay on Win10 and pray that there is an easy Registry Hack that makes Microsoft think that your Win10-Home/Pro install is a 2019 Ent-LTSC so that we receive Sec. Patches..

    * Stay on 10, and pray that Microsoft releases Sec patches for Win10 from time to time to address the most severe issues like they did with XP in May 2014, May 2017 or May 2019.

    * Get Win10 2019 Ent-LTSC as a "Warez".

    * Go to Linux/*BSD

    Hope this is usefull.

    • by ledow ( 319597 )

      If you're still using Windows 10 in 2024, worry about it then.

      That's literally three years to decide what to do about it. By which time, Windows 11 will have matured enough to probably be able to use, and maybe even have a successor.

      Churning ancient OS on and on and on forever - no matter the OS - is just a recipe for disaster.

      I will be sticking with 10 until 11 is stable and gets options to turn off all the crap, but I won't be extending 10 indefinitely with stuff like this. I'm one of the hangers-on and

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      """supported"""

      Look at what happened to Windows 7. It got some security patches but they had massive performance regressions. Sometimes Microsoft just disabled features instead of fixing them.

      So while I'm sure technically Windows 10 will still be supported until 2029 and as secure as Windows can be, it will probably not be a very enjoyable experience.

      The other issue will be hardware support. If your GPU dies and you need a replacement one, you need Windows 10 drivers. A someone who runs Windows 8.1 and Wind

    • patches will be developed by and avaliable to Microsoft

      There's "patches" and there's patches. LTSC does not get back ported bug or functionality fixes. It's only security fixes. That would be fine if Windows 10 was a flawless masterpiece. But...

      Out of all my machines, my work machine frustrates me the most on the most basic shit, like the onscreen keyboard disappearing when selecting a text entry field in a webpage (fixed a year ago by a normal Windows 10 bug fix, not backported to the LTSC, you need to wait for a full on feature update for that).

  • I say they start over with numbering and just support one version: Win0
  • "Fewer Windows Updates!" sounding good to some who don't want any bother at all.
  • by jargonburn ( 1950578 ) on Wednesday November 17, 2021 @04:51AM (#61995389)

    It's not clear what "feature updates" will entail for an operating system that has been replaced

    Well, for starters, any new and improved *ahem* telemetry upgrades will likely make the cut.... :frowny-face:

  • I would love for Windows to never update again (other than security). Pretty much every machine here is just a way to get to a web browser. Not much different for me at home.

    Other than some circle-jerk of Windows "fans", who honestly gives a shit about all the "new" features coming from an Operation System? That is what software is for. Let the OS just be a stable platform. If I want to be creative (I don't, but that is the fluff MS was pushing for Win11 justification), I would rather get software from a c
  • Good news for the final OS version ever! (not)

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