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This is a hard problem. And Microsoft didn't have a choice. Given an option regular users will never update their computers, perhaps partly due to fear of what

This is a hard problem. And Microsoft didn't have a choice. Given an option regular users will never update their computers, perhaps partly due to fear of what they don't understand, fear of change, or maybe due to past bad update experiences. I witness this in my mom with technology all the time. Every time there's a popup she mini-panics, and she has trained herself to click close every time she sees something she doesn't understand. Google started the trend of silently updating Chrome and everyone including Microsoft followed after, except upgrading an OS is nothing like updating a browser. For most parts, I think auto update is necessary for tech illiterates, especially now that everybody's jumping on the Agile bandwagon, including Windows. There needs to be a way to ensure new versions reach their users given everyone's just churning out barely working software these days. Honestly I don't have a problem with that. But if they don't give power user the option to opt out, this is just disrespectful

searchableguy 6y ago
Are linux users regular users?
- apexalpha 6y ago
  What if your goal is to bring Linux to the masses?
  - searchableguy 6y ago
    That boat sailed long ago. Windows has a pretty decent linux subsystem now. Even devs that were hardcore linux enthusiasts moved to windows. The benefit of linux is that it doesn't force stuff on you that you can't disable compared to windows. If you take that away, there are very little reasons for any normal user to move.
    - alrs 6y ago
      ehhhh, I've never seen a hardcore Linux developer move to Windows. WSL exists to sunset Windows-based development, not the other way around. Windows Server gets to exist so long as it acts as a funnel into Azure. Someday it will be sold off to Wipro, a la VMS or OS/2.
      - indigodaddy 6y ago
        Windows Server won’t be getting “sold off.” I’m not sure you understand just how entrenched Windows Server is in the Enterprise and just about every Fortune 500 company out there, including huge telecoms and ISPs. MS still makes a ton of money off Server, and most of the companies/Enterprise using Server aren’t even thinking about Azure.
        alrs 6y ago
        This is exactly the argument that was being made about Netware in 1994, or OS/2 in 1996, or Solaris in 2005. I'm well aware of how important Windows Server was in the enterprise, and I'm aware of how far it has fallen.
    - screamingninja 6y ago
      > Even devs that were hardcore linux enthusiasts moved to windows. Is this a personal opinion or pure speculation?
      - searchableguy 6y ago
        Just saw it within my circle.
    - stOneskull 6y ago
      I think dual booting is still the way. Gets the best out of linux and eliminates headaches. Boot up times are so fast these days, in and out of the OSs almost as fast as logging in and out.
  - SlowRobotAhead 6y ago
    Well then there is a lot of work to do besides snapping and updates. For a normal user, the INSTANT something goes wrong in Linux, you step from “something kinda like Windows” to “100% Voodoo you are expected to know”
    - BenjiWiebe 6y ago
      In my experience the average Windows only user is just as clueless when Windows breaks. Which it does, plenty of times.
      - SlowRobotAhead 6y ago
        That’s not untrue at all. It’s just that when I have used that needs to reset his WiFi adapter, there are nice picture tutorials for Windows, and on Linux you better have some idea what a /dev/ is. Think about explaining to grandma over the phone. It’s just a non-starter for Linux. Which is fine, it’s what it is for a reason. But it’ll never have mass appeal because of it.
        searchableguy 6y ago
        For comparison - https://net2.com/how-to-fix-wifi-not-working-on-ubuntu/ https://net2.com/how-to-fix-wifi-not-working-on-ubuntu/ https://support.microsoft.com/en-in/help/10741/windows-fix-network-connection-issues https://support.microsoft.com/en-in/help/10741/windows-fix-n...
        SlowRobotAhead 6y ago
        Yea, “ First determine the name of your WiFi interface by issuing the command : nmcli d “ I knew that, but only in the back of my head. If the internet wasn’t working, you know, a WiFi problem, I would have a very tough time remembering that. Which is the point, trying to remember the voodoo. And if I had to ask grandma to type in nmcli d then read me what she sees? Well, if anyone wants to prove me wrong, I’ll set my grandma up on Linux and give her your cell number. I get that there are a lot of Linux fans here, but be realistic, it’s not for most people and never will be. You need autism or have never worked outside of tech lack the empathy of how mass computer users interact with their machines.
- stinos 6y ago
  Some of them, very much. Go have a look in academia where there are hordes of tech-illiterates working on linux just because of reasons like some obscure piece of software working only properly on linux, because the postdoc did it that way, because it's cheaper, because they think it has to be done like that, ... Last lab I was in it was just painful to see how much time was completely lost on trying to get things working by people not understanding computers or OS. So if auto-update can alleviate some of those problems, why not. If it breaks things, well that's something else :)
  - searchableguy 6y ago
    Linux subsystem is there on windows. You don't have to use linux for majority of cases. Conda is pretty decent. But I want to know what specific things they use that can't work on linux subsystem? Maybe there are some and I don't know about them.
    - chrisandchris 6y ago
      There‘s a simple reason: speed. Have you ever tried to use WSL 1 with npm? I doubt do, because it just takes 10 times more time than on „real“ linux. Also, it‘s way easier to work with multiple desktops and windows position better than on Windows where it seems that they are opening always there where you don‘t look. There are also quite a lot of others, IMHO.
      - searchableguy 6y ago
        I have. It wasn't called wsl but bash on windows back then. You had to disable bunch of services related to scanning files (windows defender?) to make it barely usable but since v2, they are using a lightweight vm so the speeds are significantly better compared to what you got on bash on windows or wsl 1. I don't have anything to say about your other nitpick. A good reason to use windows is games, Adobe and office. Games using anti-cheat will not be available on linux and if you can get them to work, good luck not getting banned.
        6y ago
- banger180 6y ago
  There are many kinds of linux users, just like there are many kinds of windows users.
jimbob45 6y ago
The customer is always right. Say it with me.
- rrdharan 6y ago
  The other customers, impacted when one customer is out of date and their machine turns into part of a massive DDoS Botnet, are also customers. Say that with me. It's a distributed problem that you can't fix or meaningfully reason about just by imagining each user on their own in a vacuum.
- Achshar 6y ago
  Disagree. “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” - Henry Ford. Customer is mostly right. Not always. Use your best judgement as a business owner. Innovate where necessary and stick to customer feedback where you think it makes sense.
  - GekkePrutser 6y ago
    Henry Ford was a total dick and not customer-focused at all.
  - dTal 6y ago
    I think there's a pretty big distinction between the customer lacking the imagination to see a better solution until it is presented to them, and being denied a choice while being in full possession of the facts.
    - Achshar 6y ago
      The auto update certainly falls in the former you mean? These (older, less tech savvy) people clearly lack the imagination. That's why auto update has to be mandatory. This is again for consumer facing OS and not for the server infra.
    - thawaway1837 6y ago
      Yeah, and this isn’t even an equivalent situation. A more comparable situation is if Ford had requested his supplier send him a certain type of screw but the supplier sent him a completely different type of screw because it was “better”. It may be better. But it may also be absolutely the wrong thing to build Ford cars out of because they weren’t designed to use it. And that’s what Canonical often seems to forget. Ubuntu isn’t just a product. It’s also infrastructure, and an individual (although critical) part in many other products and systems. And AFAICT Ubuntu as a product is far less popular, and pays far less of the bill than Ubuntu as infrastructure, which is why their actions are doubly incomprehensible.
proactivesvcs 6y ago
> Given an option regular users will never update their computers This does not reflect the hundreds of regular users that I have serviced over the years. Perhaps fewer than five would postpone updates beyond a few days for convenience / uncertainty, the rest would always install Windows updates within a day or two of being prompted.
- mcny 6y ago
  My problem on Windows has never been auto update. It is the forced reboot. One that Microsoft refuses to fix because "muh backward compatibility" and instead forces reboots. Part of the solution should be that Microsoft Windows should refuse to install on any mechanical hard disk or eMMC and on any SSD slower than a certain benchmark. The other option would be to minimize the obnoxious amounts of reading and writing Windows does to disk but that would make sense. Personally, I don't mind snaps that auto update. Apparently, "modern" snaps are sandboxed but "classic" snaps are not? I think this is the biggest failure of snap. What is a snap? Why couldn't we give legacy snap and real snap two different names? It isn't like there used to be snaps and then we got modern snaps. They both started existing at the same time.
  - proactivesvcs 6y ago
    >My problem on Windows has never been auto update. It is the forced reboot. I agree - when one's workflow must be interrupted by either application or OS restart, then the software must work for the user and wait for a convenient time.
GekkePrutser 6y ago
Microsoft did have a choice. They could simply have hidden the disable auto update (and telemetry for that matter!) somewhere deeper in the OS where non-techie users will never find it. Or even a registry key or whatever.
- harrygeez 6y ago
  I haven't been using Windows for a while, but I think there's a way to disable via Group Policy or registry now?
  - jimbob45 6y ago
    There is. Hard, but possible, just the way it should be.
    - cartoonfoxes 6y ago
      Enterprise and Education only.
      - at_a_remove 6y ago
        I got Windows Long-Term Service Branch (LTSB, now LTSC for Long-Term Service Channel) for precisely this reason. After having an update happen at a bad time, one closing a file I hadn't yet saved, and another killing a process of computations I had been leaving to run overnight, I decided that I wanted to use my computer the way I saw fit, not the way someone else saw fit. If someone cannot wrap their head around the idea that I might leave a process running while I sleep, or that I might forget to save something in a program that doesn't have an autosave feature, well, they're not considering all of the use cases. For giggles, after LTSB I did "all the things" to get rid of forced updates on one particularly infrequently-used tablet and, as an experiment, left it unpatched for slightly over a year before seeing what would happen once I finally let it do its thing. For one, the updates took about three and a half hours, which I thought was interesting; just re-installing would likely be faster. More interesting, though, was that the world did not end because I had not patched this tablet. I get aiming at the eighty percent of your users who just would not think to update, but being that hostile to the other twenty percent who are aware of updates and still would like that control is annoying. It is sad to see that this kind of thinking has made its way to Linuxland, which I had imagined to be the last bastion of "we're doing this for your own good."
simias 6y ago
>Given an option regular users will never update their computers, perhaps partly due to fear of what they don't understand, fear of change, or maybe due to past bad update experiences. You make it sound like an irrational fear but there's a real cost/benefit ratio to consider when you upgrade a machine. I personally always try to keep my machines up to date but stuff does break from time to time. Like last week an arch upgrade updated some system library to a new major version which forced me to regenerate my python dev env for work (which is not a trivial task because for various reasons our environment is fairly custom). Windows is even worse in that regards because its upgrades are often significantly more intrusive (and they use automatic update to push new features and products, which is a great way to have people attempt not to update just to avoid them). IMO if OS vendors want their users to update at all costs they shouldn't force it onto them, instead they should develop better transactional update systems that effortlessly and reliably let you revert to a previous version if something goes wrong. Then there would effectively be no reason to fear any update, since you know that at any point if something goes wrong you can just click on "undo update" and you're good to go.
- majewsky 6y ago
  > You make it sound like an irrational fear but there's a real cost/benefit ratio to consider when you upgrade a machine. 95+% of users have no chance of even making this cost-benefit analysis because they cannot assess the scope or risk associated with the upgrade even if they wanted to. They have to rely on vendors making those assessments for them.
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    > They have to rely on vendors making those assessments for them. That's why I run Debian stable, which provides security updates and critical bugfixes for 5 years or more post-release with very limited changes otherwise. Maximized benefit, minimal cost.
    - bbarnett 6y ago
      That's actually untrue. FYI -- use Debian almost exclusively, been doing so for 20+ years and love it. (Well mostly, the last 5-7 years have been rough though.) What Debian provides, is security updates for 1 year after the next stable release. That's it. '5 years' is via LTS is volunteer support, provided by corporate and private donations, via a corporation in France. Their goal is to extend Debian oldstable's lifespan. The entire process is absolutely not the same as updates when running Debian stable. For example, due to its volunteer nature, companies get to decide where they 'put their money'. What packages are prioritized. Rare / unused packages may never be addressed, depending upon funding. Use PHP? Apache? The Linux Kernel? Sure, you'll see updates! Use rare package $x, and that may not happen, even though Debian Security would handle it. I can also tell you via experience, that QA is not quite as good as Debian proper. Still, is it a good thing? Sure! Is it managed by the Debian security team, 100% embracing all of its methods, and so on? NO. I felt it is important for you (and others) to know this. It's not as stable as Debian, not managed by Debian, and should ONLY be used as a stop-gap. You want stable? Stay on Debian managed security updates!
zerkten 6y ago
> Honestly I don't have a problem with that. But if they don't give power user the option to opt out, this is just disrespectful The problem is that "power users" can't be trusted to use this power responsibly, or they operate based on assumptions that won't always be true. Either way they end up hurting other people in enough situations that this becomes an ecosystem issue. Power users often help others set up their systems like they do, but those users can't manage them. Other times, power users will move on. When they were managing the systems, it wasn't a problem. Now that someone else is, the systems stop getting updated and someone has to clear up the mess. Yes, good power users help transition things properly, but don't kid yourself on the number of times this actually happens. This phenomenon is prevalent in software. Just looks at the defaults which "power users" frequently choose (cf. JWT).
- Enginerrrd 6y ago
  The arrogance in this comment astounds me. It's almost never appropriate to assume that people don't have the right to make decisions for themselves, even if you think those decisions harm them. People have different values and weigh their own decisions against their own values, not yours.
  - zerkten 6y ago
    I'm sorry that this is uncomfortable reading for you, but not everyone shares your values. What you describe is nice conceptually, but is not actually true for most of society. You can have opinions that people might bucket as libertarian, or similar this doesn't mean that the world thinks the same.
  - close04 6y ago
    > It's almost never appropriate to assume that people don't have the right to make decisions for themselves, even if you think those decisions harm them But when those decisions affect others? When your computer becomes part of a botnet and is used to attack a target then it's no longer just your problem anymore. The responsibility to prevent this must lie somewhere, either with the user or with the manufacturer. And Microsoft would rather force the updates on users and occasionally be in the news for a botched one than to constantly be in the news for botnets of hundreds of thousands of "abandoned" Windows PCs, or the constant complaint that Windows is insecure because people keep their PCs stuck on the same version they came with. To use some very current imagery, imagine if someone walked around coughing in your face saying the decision whether to wear a mask or not is theirs.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
zaat 6y ago
I understand that Microsoft see the large number of vulnerable machines on the internet as a problem thay they are responsible for and the forced update as a necessary solution. Nevertheless, I dual-boot my laptop and use Windows almost only for presentations. Whenever connections to external devices and other OS shenanigans force me to reboot my machine when I'm in the speaker position and the dreaded forced update cycle begins I swear I'll never touch that ugly OS ever again. And I already developed routine of checking for updates and booting in advance, but somehow this still happens from time time. I guess there's need to be a special "seriously not now pretty please" button.
- kds3 6y ago
  Like a big "pause updates" button they already have for years in the "advanced options" tab?
  - zaat 6y ago
    Exactly, just without the time limits. Also, make it work for all updates. Oh, and While they are at it, they should also remove the nasty auto update of office application when starting them, without giving any prior hint or notice.
silverreads 6y ago
It's not that they do not understand what is good for them, they are simply rejecting your new features.
No1 6y ago
> especially now that everybody's jumping on the Agile bandwagon, including Windows. There needs to be a way to ensure new versions reach their users given everyone's just churning out barely working software these days. The fact that everyone is on the agile bandwagon churning out barely working software is the main reason why people do not want new versions of software magically appearing on their computers. Once you've got a version that actually works for you, allowing an update to come through is like playing russian roulette.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  People feared Windows updates long before agile was a thing.
jorams 6y ago
> Microsoft didn't have a choice. Given an option regular users will never update their computers I think this is a misconception. A few weeks ago I was updating my Windows 7 install that hadn't booted for a year or so. I opened Windows Update. It looked for updates, and found some. I clicked the update button. It proceeded to start downloading, by which I mean it would hang for 1 to 2 minutes and then download very quickly. When it was done updating, it required a reboot. After the reboot it needed to do something for another 5 minutes. The last 2 of those minutes it showed 100% progress, seemingly stuck again. Then when that was done, it rebooted again. I started Windows Update again. It looked for updates. There were more updates. I clicked the update button. It proceeded to start downloading, by which I mean it would hang for 1 to 2 minutes and then download very quickly. When it was done updating, it required a reboot... and so on, and so on, 5 or so times. Every iteration took somewhere between 10 and 45 minutes. Determining how long an iteration would take was impossible, because everything appeared to just get stuck all the time. This has been the Windows update experience through XP, Vista, 7, 8 and now 10. The result of this madness is of course that nobody updates Windows. To solve that, you can go two different ways: Make updates painless, or force everyone to go through the pain again, and again, and again. Microsoft being Microsoft, they picked the latter. Meanwhile, on a typical Linux system, I just decide to update every once in a while. I make it look for updates, get a list of everything that will get updated, and accept. It starts downloading, by which I mean it immediately downloads everything very quickly. When it is done updating, it may require a reboot if the kernel got updated. After the reboot it doesn't have to do anything. I make it look for updates, and there are none. Updating my system actually brought it up-to-date. This generally takes 2 to 15 minutes, almost entirely dependent on the amount of data that needs to be downloaded. The result of this is that I update my Linux systems very often. It's painless, so why not?
- my123 6y ago
  Updates are cumulative now to avoid such issues. Prior to this, the updating choices were geared towards regular users, so that such a case wasn't really counted...
- snuxoll 6y ago
  The update loop on Windows 7 is more an artifact of the traditional Windows servicing model where updates aren’t cumulative and only periodically were cumulative bundles released, as well as service packs incorporating prior hotfixes as well. The Windows 10 servicing model doesn’t have that problem, a new cumulative update gets pushed out every month and can get a machine to the latest update for that branch regardless of how long it’s been out of contact with Windows Update. The semi-annual branches can also be directly upgraded to from any prior branch, as they are essentially a full upgrade of Windows just like moving between releases of Ubuntu/Fedora/etc.
michaelmrose 6y ago
Options are for everyone not power users. Options are a necessary escape hatch for users when you fail to take into account their needs. Inevitably you will miss some use cases. Given sufficient configurability users faced with substantial challenges will be able to find a way to use your software. If you can easily search options including a description of the option this can still be usable for all.

searchableguy 6y ago

Are linux users regular users?

apexalpha 6y ago
What if your goal is to bring Linux to the masses?
- searchableguy 6y ago
  That boat sailed long ago. Windows has a pretty decent linux subsystem now. Even devs that were hardcore linux enthusiasts moved to windows. The benefit of linux is that it doesn't force stuff on you that you can't disable compared to windows. If you take that away, there are very little reasons for any normal user to move.
  - alrs 6y ago
    ehhhh, I've never seen a hardcore Linux developer move to Windows. WSL exists to sunset Windows-based development, not the other way around. Windows Server gets to exist so long as it acts as a funnel into Azure. Someday it will be sold off to Wipro, a la VMS or OS/2.
    - indigodaddy 6y ago
      Windows Server won’t be getting “sold off.” I’m not sure you understand just how entrenched Windows Server is in the Enterprise and just about every Fortune 500 company out there, including huge telecoms and ISPs. MS still makes a ton of money off Server, and most of the companies/Enterprise using Server aren’t even thinking about Azure.
      - alrs 6y ago
        This is exactly the argument that was being made about Netware in 1994, or OS/2 in 1996, or Solaris in 2005. I'm well aware of how important Windows Server was in the enterprise, and I'm aware of how far it has fallen.
  - screamingninja 6y ago
    > Even devs that were hardcore linux enthusiasts moved to windows. Is this a personal opinion or pure speculation?
    - searchableguy 6y ago
      Just saw it within my circle.
  - stOneskull 6y ago
    I think dual booting is still the way. Gets the best out of linux and eliminates headaches. Boot up times are so fast these days, in and out of the OSs almost as fast as logging in and out.
- SlowRobotAhead 6y ago
  Well then there is a lot of work to do besides snapping and updates. For a normal user, the INSTANT something goes wrong in Linux, you step from “something kinda like Windows” to “100% Voodoo you are expected to know”
  - BenjiWiebe 6y ago
    In my experience the average Windows only user is just as clueless when Windows breaks. Which it does, plenty of times.
    - SlowRobotAhead 6y ago
      That’s not untrue at all. It’s just that when I have used that needs to reset his WiFi adapter, there are nice picture tutorials for Windows, and on Linux you better have some idea what a /dev/ is. Think about explaining to grandma over the phone. It’s just a non-starter for Linux. Which is fine, it’s what it is for a reason. But it’ll never have mass appeal because of it.
      - searchableguy 6y ago
        For comparison - https://net2.com/how-to-fix-wifi-not-working-on-ubuntu/ https://net2.com/how-to-fix-wifi-not-working-on-ubuntu/ https://support.microsoft.com/en-in/help/10741/windows-fix-network-connection-issues https://support.microsoft.com/en-in/help/10741/windows-fix-n...
        SlowRobotAhead 6y ago
        Yea, “ First determine the name of your WiFi interface by issuing the command : nmcli d “ I knew that, but only in the back of my head. If the internet wasn’t working, you know, a WiFi problem, I would have a very tough time remembering that. Which is the point, trying to remember the voodoo. And if I had to ask grandma to type in nmcli d then read me what she sees? Well, if anyone wants to prove me wrong, I’ll set my grandma up on Linux and give her your cell number. I get that there are a lot of Linux fans here, but be realistic, it’s not for most people and never will be. You need autism or have never worked outside of tech lack the empathy of how mass computer users interact with their machines.
stinos 6y ago
Some of them, very much. Go have a look in academia where there are hordes of tech-illiterates working on linux just because of reasons like some obscure piece of software working only properly on linux, because the postdoc did it that way, because it's cheaper, because they think it has to be done like that, ... Last lab I was in it was just painful to see how much time was completely lost on trying to get things working by people not understanding computers or OS. So if auto-update can alleviate some of those problems, why not. If it breaks things, well that's something else :)
- searchableguy 6y ago
  Linux subsystem is there on windows. You don't have to use linux for majority of cases. Conda is pretty decent. But I want to know what specific things they use that can't work on linux subsystem? Maybe there are some and I don't know about them.
  - chrisandchris 6y ago
    There‘s a simple reason: speed. Have you ever tried to use WSL 1 with npm? I doubt do, because it just takes 10 times more time than on „real“ linux. Also, it‘s way easier to work with multiple desktops and windows position better than on Windows where it seems that they are opening always there where you don‘t look. There are also quite a lot of others, IMHO.
    - searchableguy 6y ago
      I have. It wasn't called wsl but bash on windows back then. You had to disable bunch of services related to scanning files (windows defender?) to make it barely usable but since v2, they are using a lightweight vm so the speeds are significantly better compared to what you got on bash on windows or wsl 1. I don't have anything to say about your other nitpick. A good reason to use windows is games, Adobe and office. Games using anti-cheat will not be available on linux and if you can get them to work, good luck not getting banned.
      - 6y ago
banger180 6y ago
There are many kinds of linux users, just like there are many kinds of windows users.

jimbob45 6y ago

The customer is always right. Say it with me.

rrdharan 6y ago
The other customers, impacted when one customer is out of date and their machine turns into part of a massive DDoS Botnet, are also customers. Say that with me. It's a distributed problem that you can't fix or meaningfully reason about just by imagining each user on their own in a vacuum.
Achshar 6y ago
Disagree. “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” - Henry Ford. Customer is mostly right. Not always. Use your best judgement as a business owner. Innovate where necessary and stick to customer feedback where you think it makes sense.
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  Henry Ford was a total dick and not customer-focused at all.
- dTal 6y ago
  I think there's a pretty big distinction between the customer lacking the imagination to see a better solution until it is presented to them, and being denied a choice while being in full possession of the facts.
  - Achshar 6y ago
    The auto update certainly falls in the former you mean? These (older, less tech savvy) people clearly lack the imagination. That's why auto update has to be mandatory. This is again for consumer facing OS and not for the server infra.
  - thawaway1837 6y ago
    Yeah, and this isn’t even an equivalent situation. A more comparable situation is if Ford had requested his supplier send him a certain type of screw but the supplier sent him a completely different type of screw because it was “better”. It may be better. But it may also be absolutely the wrong thing to build Ford cars out of because they weren’t designed to use it. And that’s what Canonical often seems to forget. Ubuntu isn’t just a product. It’s also infrastructure, and an individual (although critical) part in many other products and systems. And AFAICT Ubuntu as a product is far less popular, and pays far less of the bill than Ubuntu as infrastructure, which is why their actions are doubly incomprehensible.

proactivesvcs 6y ago

> Given an option regular users will never update their computers This does not reflect the hundreds of regular users that I have serviced over the years. Perhaps fewer than five would postpone updates beyond a few days for convenience / uncertainty, the rest would always install Windows updates within a day or two of being prompted.

mcny 6y ago
My problem on Windows has never been auto update. It is the forced reboot. One that Microsoft refuses to fix because "muh backward compatibility" and instead forces reboots. Part of the solution should be that Microsoft Windows should refuse to install on any mechanical hard disk or eMMC and on any SSD slower than a certain benchmark. The other option would be to minimize the obnoxious amounts of reading and writing Windows does to disk but that would make sense. Personally, I don't mind snaps that auto update. Apparently, "modern" snaps are sandboxed but "classic" snaps are not? I think this is the biggest failure of snap. What is a snap? Why couldn't we give legacy snap and real snap two different names? It isn't like there used to be snaps and then we got modern snaps. They both started existing at the same time.
- proactivesvcs 6y ago
  >My problem on Windows has never been auto update. It is the forced reboot. I agree - when one's workflow must be interrupted by either application or OS restart, then the software must work for the user and wait for a convenient time.

GekkePrutser 6y ago

Microsoft did have a choice. They could simply have hidden the disable auto update (and telemetry for that matter!) somewhere deeper in the OS where non-techie users will never find it. Or even a registry key or whatever.

harrygeez 6y ago
I haven't been using Windows for a while, but I think there's a way to disable via Group Policy or registry now?
- jimbob45 6y ago
  There is. Hard, but possible, just the way it should be.
  - cartoonfoxes 6y ago
    Enterprise and Education only.
    - at_a_remove 6y ago
      I got Windows Long-Term Service Branch (LTSB, now LTSC for Long-Term Service Channel) for precisely this reason. After having an update happen at a bad time, one closing a file I hadn't yet saved, and another killing a process of computations I had been leaving to run overnight, I decided that I wanted to use my computer the way I saw fit, not the way someone else saw fit. If someone cannot wrap their head around the idea that I might leave a process running while I sleep, or that I might forget to save something in a program that doesn't have an autosave feature, well, they're not considering all of the use cases. For giggles, after LTSB I did "all the things" to get rid of forced updates on one particularly infrequently-used tablet and, as an experiment, left it unpatched for slightly over a year before seeing what would happen once I finally let it do its thing. For one, the updates took about three and a half hours, which I thought was interesting; just re-installing would likely be faster. More interesting, though, was that the world did not end because I had not patched this tablet. I get aiming at the eighty percent of your users who just would not think to update, but being that hostile to the other twenty percent who are aware of updates and still would like that control is annoying. It is sad to see that this kind of thinking has made its way to Linuxland, which I had imagined to be the last bastion of "we're doing this for your own good."

simias 6y ago

>Given an option regular users will never update their computers, perhaps partly due to fear of what they don't understand, fear of change, or maybe due to past bad update experiences. You make it sound like an irrational fear but there's a real cost/benefit ratio to consider when you upgrade a machine. I personally always try to keep my machines up to date but stuff does break from time to time. Like last week an arch upgrade updated some system library to a new major version which forced me to regenerate my python dev env for work (which is not a trivial task because for various reasons our environment is fairly custom). Windows is even worse in that regards because its upgrades are often significantly more intrusive (and they use automatic update to push new features and products, which is a great way to have people attempt not to update just to avoid them). IMO if OS vendors want their users to update at all costs they shouldn't force it onto them, instead they should develop better transactional update systems that effortlessly and reliably let you revert to a previous version if something goes wrong. Then there would effectively be no reason to fear any update, since you know that at any point if something goes wrong you can just click on "undo update" and you're good to go.

majewsky 6y ago
> You make it sound like an irrational fear but there's a real cost/benefit ratio to consider when you upgrade a machine. 95+% of users have no chance of even making this cost-benefit analysis because they cannot assess the scope or risk associated with the upgrade even if they wanted to. They have to rely on vendors making those assessments for them.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  > They have to rely on vendors making those assessments for them. That's why I run Debian stable, which provides security updates and critical bugfixes for 5 years or more post-release with very limited changes otherwise. Maximized benefit, minimal cost.
  - bbarnett 6y ago
    That's actually untrue. FYI -- use Debian almost exclusively, been doing so for 20+ years and love it. (Well mostly, the last 5-7 years have been rough though.) What Debian provides, is security updates for 1 year after the next stable release. That's it. '5 years' is via LTS is volunteer support, provided by corporate and private donations, via a corporation in France. Their goal is to extend Debian oldstable's lifespan. The entire process is absolutely not the same as updates when running Debian stable. For example, due to its volunteer nature, companies get to decide where they 'put their money'. What packages are prioritized. Rare / unused packages may never be addressed, depending upon funding. Use PHP? Apache? The Linux Kernel? Sure, you'll see updates! Use rare package $x, and that may not happen, even though Debian Security would handle it. I can also tell you via experience, that QA is not quite as good as Debian proper. Still, is it a good thing? Sure! Is it managed by the Debian security team, 100% embracing all of its methods, and so on? NO. I felt it is important for you (and others) to know this. It's not as stable as Debian, not managed by Debian, and should ONLY be used as a stop-gap. You want stable? Stay on Debian managed security updates!

zerkten 6y ago

> Honestly I don't have a problem with that. But if they don't give power user the option to opt out, this is just disrespectful The problem is that "power users" can't be trusted to use this power responsibly, or they operate based on assumptions that won't always be true. Either way they end up hurting other people in enough situations that this becomes an ecosystem issue. Power users often help others set up their systems like they do, but those users can't manage them. Other times, power users will move on. When they were managing the systems, it wasn't a problem. Now that someone else is, the systems stop getting updated and someone has to clear up the mess. Yes, good power users help transition things properly, but don't kid yourself on the number of times this actually happens. This phenomenon is prevalent in software. Just looks at the defaults which "power users" frequently choose (cf. JWT).

Enginerrrd 6y ago
The arrogance in this comment astounds me. It's almost never appropriate to assume that people don't have the right to make decisions for themselves, even if you think those decisions harm them. People have different values and weigh their own decisions against their own values, not yours.
- zerkten 6y ago
  I'm sorry that this is uncomfortable reading for you, but not everyone shares your values. What you describe is nice conceptually, but is not actually true for most of society. You can have opinions that people might bucket as libertarian, or similar this doesn't mean that the world thinks the same.
- close04 6y ago
  > It's almost never appropriate to assume that people don't have the right to make decisions for themselves, even if you think those decisions harm them But when those decisions affect others? When your computer becomes part of a botnet and is used to attack a target then it's no longer just your problem anymore. The responsibility to prevent this must lie somewhere, either with the user or with the manufacturer. And Microsoft would rather force the updates on users and occasionally be in the news for a botched one than to constantly be in the news for botnets of hundreds of thousands of "abandoned" Windows PCs, or the constant complaint that Windows is insecure because people keep their PCs stuck on the same version they came with. To use some very current imagery, imagine if someone walked around coughing in your face saying the decision whether to wear a mask or not is theirs.

deleted 6y ago

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zaat 6y ago

I understand that Microsoft see the large number of vulnerable machines on the internet as a problem thay they are responsible for and the forced update as a necessary solution. Nevertheless, I dual-boot my laptop and use Windows almost only for presentations. Whenever connections to external devices and other OS shenanigans force me to reboot my machine when I'm in the speaker position and the dreaded forced update cycle begins I swear I'll never touch that ugly OS ever again. And I already developed routine of checking for updates and booting in advance, but somehow this still happens from time time. I guess there's need to be a special "seriously not now pretty please" button.

kds3 6y ago
Like a big "pause updates" button they already have for years in the "advanced options" tab?
- zaat 6y ago
  Exactly, just without the time limits. Also, make it work for all updates. Oh, and While they are at it, they should also remove the nasty auto update of office application when starting them, without giving any prior hint or notice.

silverreads 6y ago

It's not that they do not understand what is good for them, they are simply rejecting your new features.

No1 6y ago

> especially now that everybody's jumping on the Agile bandwagon, including Windows. There needs to be a way to ensure new versions reach their users given everyone's just churning out barely working software these days. The fact that everyone is on the agile bandwagon churning out barely working software is the main reason why people do not want new versions of software magically appearing on their computers. Once you've got a version that actually works for you, allowing an update to come through is like playing russian roulette.

ashtonkem 6y ago
People feared Windows updates long before agile was a thing.

jorams 6y ago

> Microsoft didn't have a choice. Given an option regular users will never update their computers I think this is a misconception. A few weeks ago I was updating my Windows 7 install that hadn't booted for a year or so. I opened Windows Update. It looked for updates, and found some. I clicked the update button. It proceeded to start downloading, by which I mean it would hang for 1 to 2 minutes and then download very quickly. When it was done updating, it required a reboot. After the reboot it needed to do something for another 5 minutes. The last 2 of those minutes it showed 100% progress, seemingly stuck again. Then when that was done, it rebooted again. I started Windows Update again. It looked for updates. There were more updates. I clicked the update button. It proceeded to start downloading, by which I mean it would hang for 1 to 2 minutes and then download very quickly. When it was done updating, it required a reboot... and so on, and so on, 5 or so times. Every iteration took somewhere between 10 and 45 minutes. Determining how long an iteration would take was impossible, because everything appeared to just get stuck all the time. This has been the Windows update experience through XP, Vista, 7, 8 and now 10. The result of this madness is of course that nobody updates Windows. To solve that, you can go two different ways: Make updates painless, or force everyone to go through the pain again, and again, and again. Microsoft being Microsoft, they picked the latter. Meanwhile, on a typical Linux system, I just decide to update every once in a while. I make it look for updates, get a list of everything that will get updated, and accept. It starts downloading, by which I mean it immediately downloads everything very quickly. When it is done updating, it may require a reboot if the kernel got updated. After the reboot it doesn't have to do anything. I make it look for updates, and there are none. Updating my system actually brought it up-to-date. This generally takes 2 to 15 minutes, almost entirely dependent on the amount of data that needs to be downloaded. The result of this is that I update my Linux systems very often. It's painless, so why not?

my123 6y ago
Updates are cumulative now to avoid such issues. Prior to this, the updating choices were geared towards regular users, so that such a case wasn't really counted...
snuxoll 6y ago
The update loop on Windows 7 is more an artifact of the traditional Windows servicing model where updates aren’t cumulative and only periodically were cumulative bundles released, as well as service packs incorporating prior hotfixes as well. The Windows 10 servicing model doesn’t have that problem, a new cumulative update gets pushed out every month and can get a machine to the latest update for that branch regardless of how long it’s been out of contact with Windows Update. The semi-annual branches can also be directly upgraded to from any prior branch, as they are essentially a full upgrade of Windows just like moving between releases of Ubuntu/Fedora/etc.

michaelmrose 6y ago

Options are for everyone not power users. Options are a necessary escape hatch for users when you fail to take into account their needs. Inevitably you will miss some use cases. Given sufficient configurability users faced with substantial challenges will be able to find a way to use your software. If you can easily search options including a description of the option this can still be usable for all.