22 ms·

Microsoft just force restarted my Windows PC again to install more unwanted apps

264 points by adrian_mrd 6y ago

namelosw 6y ago
I was really pissed off days ago, when Windows 10 keeps prompting me pop-ups for updating several times when I was playing online game. I had to choose remind me 1 hour later because there was no other better option to defer it. I can only imagine how upset people would be when they have more serious jobs interrupted.
hirako2000 6y ago
Really, was it hard to see ads coming to the start menu? Since Windows 10 came out, the OS has become a search engine for stuff, ranking MS products highest of course. People and enterprises insist to use this OS calamity, despite the fact there are free and open source alternatives. I guess we will still see news about MS windows non sense in 2030
- swinglock 6y ago
  Enterprises don't use the shareware version of Windows.
  - RealStickman_ 6y ago
    It shouldn't be about whether somebody uses the home/pro or enterprise version. It should be about whether they paid or not. I'm perfeclty fine with this behaviour on unactivated windows, but it shouldn't be happening in a product I paid for.
  - rleigh 6y ago
    As if the "enterprise" version is much better. It's not. I had an unscheduled reboot losing all my work just this week. Taking that control away was the single most awful change ever made to Windows. It made it undependable and unreliable for everyone.
- tralarpa 6y ago
  > People and enterprises insist to use this OS calamity, despite the fact there are free and open source alternatives I would like so much to replace Windows with Linux on my laptop. But every time I try (which I do every 5 years or so, despite knowing better) it ends in tears and frustration. I don't even have exotic hardware. Just some mainstream Thinkpads and Dell laptops. Usually, I give up after literally (!) weeks of trying to get sound / hardware accelerated graphics / hibernation / power management / etc. working properly. Ironically, I get the best Linux experience with WSL or when I run it in a VM on top of Windows.
- znpy 6y ago
  > People and enterprises insist to use this OS calamity, despite the fact there are free and open source alternatives. I guess we will still see news about MS windows non sense in 2030 The fact is that Microsoft Office is still lightyears ahead of Open/Libre/Whatever-Office. And enterprises need that office suite. And the integration between Office, ActiveDirectory and Office365 (their cloud service) is just awesome, spot on. It's impressively good as a groupware solution. Outlook on Windows is fairly okay, and covers the needs of 99% of the office workers (Outlook on Mac OS is superb, by the way). The thing is: until the FOSS alternative becomes a no-brainer, enterprises will keep paying for Office, and thus for Windows.
Spearchucker 6y ago
This has happened to me too and I feel the same as the author about it. The real frustration is that I do a lot of consulting work for corporates and so Windows is a requirement. Plus of course that *nix doesn't have Office and that anything from Google behaves orders of magnitude worse than Microsoft's OS, and that I depend on Visual Sudio. I can't seem to find an ideal.
- cehrlich 6y ago
  It's far from ideal, but my solution is a Mac (obviously MacOS has its own problems, but they're problems that don't bother me as much personally, and it could of course also be replaced by Linux, some sort of *nix, etc) with a Windows VM. The VM has the bare minimum amount of software I need, access to a few folders from the host OS, other than that it's stripped to the bare minimum. It doesn't "fix" Windows, but the issues are much less annoying when Windows is just a launcher for the handful of things that I need it for.
  - Spearchucker 6y ago
    You remind me that this exact setup was proposed to me before, and as a solution it's possiblely the most appealing of all. Except for cost, and as an unnecessary but fun distraction, gaming.
zamalek 6y ago
I am not denying that this is happening to people, because the facts are clear: it absolutely is. I just don't understand how it doesn't happen to me. I don't leave updates hanging about for weeks and months, which explains how forced reboots are not a problem. Forced reboots are your own stupid fault, I have no pity at all. What doesn't make sense is that I get none of this crapware on my system. It's clearly possible to disable this garbage, I don't know how I have done it without restorting to any scripts. Edit: to clarify, as someone who very recently installed Win10 and Office. You do not have to reboot to install Office. Windows had to reboot because some critical update had to be installed, and office so happened to be installed at the same time. Don't get me wrong, I uninstall a few things after a fresh Windows install (edit 2: and that is unacceptable behavior from Microsoft). This article, however, is way off with the primary complaint: the reboot. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Allow Windows to update, because it really does know best. Edit 3: this is the Verge, who put bloody thermal paste onto a CPU when the AIO had it pre-installed. There isn't a high bar of journalism here.
- bnt 6y ago
  Maybe you disabled internet on your machine? /s
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- matsemann 6y ago
  I'm in the same boat. Maybe how my work has configured my laptop or something, some group policy?
  - pvg 6y ago
    You can definitely turn off the random reboot with policies, on Pro and up.
    - breakingcups 6y ago
      Yep, if you're a home user, get bent. Your wishes don't matter to Microsoft.
setzer22 6y ago
EDIT: Just to be very sincere and transparent. The content of this post has been removed to avoid further discussion. I do not think my kind of views are welcome in this community.
- m-ee 6y ago
  This is a very software view of things. You’d be hard pressed to get by with whatever the FOSS equivalents of CAD/EDA software are.
  - etaioinshrdlu 6y ago
    This is very correct. And this is specific to professional use cases. Hobbyists can get by with FOSS tools.
  - iExploder 6y ago
    how about KiCad as replacement for EDA? for CAD, yeah, that is really the last thing to be ported to linux afaik
  - Haga 6y ago
    We run it on vms in our shop, windows behaves if frozen in time.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Kliment 6y ago
    I do professional electronics design and some mechanical design. I use 100% FLOSS tools. KiCAD nightly is currently slightly less buggy than the closed crap, and about as capable. The major difference is that bugs I report get fixed within days, which I've never experienced with any of the commercial offerings. I use stable KiCAD for most projects, and nightly for things that need advanced functionality. It's absolutely excellent. The mechanical design story is not as great, but FreeCAD is improving at a decent pace and now that Fusion is crippleware a lot of people are looking into FreeCAD, and complaining about how it works, and some are contributing and improving it. KiCAD went through this cycle due to a large influx of Eagle users when Eagle got eaten by the beast, and came out dramatically, shockingly improved. If the same thing happens to FreeCAD in the next few years I doubt we'll have any excuse to go back. So I don't feel "hard pressed to get by" - I feel more productive than before I switched to FLOSS tools.
jmcs 6y ago
There's no such thing as your Windows PC, at least for home users. There are only Microsoft's Windows PCs and they are very open about it.
- failuser 6y ago
  They gave away their game renaming “My Computer” to “This PC”
- names_are_hard 6y ago
  And if you're an enterprise user, it's not your PC either. It belongs to your IT department. (Of course everyone knows this, but in the context of this conversation the relevant part is that it'll do updates when your IT people dictate, regardless of how convenient it is or isn't for you the user.) I imagine there are good reasons in force to update, like security patches. But I'd be lying if I didn't find it frustrating that my work laptop needs to update at what always feels like an inopportune time. In general, when I am prompted about a software update I default to selecting "not now" (I've been refusing Google Photos' nagging for what feels like forever now). What does it say about our industry that users have developed an automatic aversion to updates? Shouldn't updates be something exciting? Interesting? Somewhere along the line we burned our relationship with users and lost their trust.
  - Falkon1313 6y ago
    Or at least seamless. The industry lost the distinction between updates and upgrades some years ago. If after an update, everything still worked properly, people wouldn't have an aversion to it. But in an era where even a minor version 'security update' adds and removes features and entire applications, sometimes causes loss of data, and may totally change the UI, people are naturally wary. Nobody wants to spend hours trying to get their computer back to the way it was yesterday, redo all the work they were doing, or learn new workflows when they have a deadline tomorrow or an important presentation to do this afternoon. When updates have become malware, people will block them.
Aldqueath 6y ago
we use windows 10 at work and i also noticed that when an update is available and you want to shut down the computer, you can choose between "shutdown" and "apply updates then shutdown", however recently even doing just "shutdown" will still apply the updates. happened to me twice now, and to a few colleagues as well
tiku 6y ago
It even removed apps. Postman was gone after my update..
dvdbloc 6y ago
Are there preferred ways to disable this sort of behavior? Sort of make Windows home/pro behave more like the enterprise version which I hear is devoid of this BS?
- trav4225 6y ago
  Uninstalling should do the trick. ;-)
- bleepblorp 6y ago
  Enterprise still does forced reboots. The only way to completely prevent them is to completely incapacitate Windows Update and forego all updates. It's not a good idea to discuss techniques to disable Windows Update in open fourms as Microsoft has a habit of sabotaging anti-update techniques that become too well known.
peter_retief 6y ago
Why do people still use Microsoft(MS)? Some companies force people to use MS but then the Linux desktop offerings have never been great. Of course serious power users use Mac. I only use Linux but have been forced to use MS with some development jobs. Seeing from both sides I can say the MS based development companies were amateurish while the Unix/Linux/Mac were mostly professional.
- touristtam 6y ago
  Usually people heavily invested in MSOffice (either through licenses or through personal experience).
  - peter_retief 6y ago
    It is exactly that, licensing, training, certificates and experience.
- coverj 6y ago
  > Why do people still use Microsoft(MS)? for me, Steam for video games and Visual Studio
  - FullyFunctional 6y ago
    Proton is getting pretty good (Windows games on Linux) and VS Code is pretty fantastic (supported on almost all the platforms I use). I do have a Windows installation, but I boot it up less than one a month.
- UglyToad 6y ago
  I think OS discussions often become a breeding ground for people to feel offended because people have different preferences but: I just don't find Linux (or Mac) a compelling alternative. I can do everything I possibly need on Windows; Visual Studio, gaming, VS code, docker, node, browsing, whatever. I absolutely think Linux is so much better for servers since it can all be done from the command line..NET Core was a game changer in that regard, but I'm still perfectly fine with Windows desktop. I think it comes down to what you prefer, are you a tinkerer or just a user? I just want my desktop to run, I don't care what drivers I'm running or anything like that. Windows comes with the computer, I'm used to it and I've never had the problems described by people. I can plug in any peripheral and it just goes, it's frictionless for me. As far as restarting I'm fine with it, I don't run my computer 24 hours a day, I shut it down after work until I need it for gaming or other reasons, I'm not running software for the space shuttle so I don't need 10 nines uptime
BrandoElFollito 6y ago
There are two aspects of this: - the ad part that is truly awful. If this indeed happens I can easy understand the rage of users (I have a corporate Windows 10 so I do not see that behaviour) - the forced restart part: from the perspective of someone working in information security: good job. People do not give a shit about security and when begged to reboot quickly (= within, say, 3 days) they have all kind of important things to do instead for months. I do not care if their machine is hacked and all their stuff stolen. What I care about is that this machine becomes a part of a bot that is either poses a risk to others (DDoS) or sends out crap (phishing, spam). Such machines should be actively hunted and taken down. So MS forcing these users to have their PC rebooted even in the middle of their work (after several attempts to have it done by the user) is great.
- touristtam 6y ago
  Rebooting during working hours, not great at all. Also rebooting without saving the state of the applications opened while the user is working away, not great either. There are reason why security is taking a back seat, business needs are greater than the risk incurred by user bad behaviour. BTW how is it that Windows 10 still needs more reboot to update any parts of itself, than a regular Linux distro? The update cycle on my Windows 10 machine is maddening compared to my Linux workstation.
  - 2fast4you 6y ago
    It’s really odd that Windows is reboot during working hours. It knows when I’m working, it can detect my habits. Also; Windows reboots so much probably because of legacy. It was never designed to live reload important components. Why Word needs a reboot, I’ll never know.
    - bleepblorp 6y ago
      Generally, forced reboots caused by applications are due to a need to replace shared components that are in use by background processes.
  - 6y ago
zxcb1 6y ago
Use Linux and virtualization for peace of mind.
- 2fast4you 6y ago
  Windows with PCIE pass through for gaming is so nice. I get nearly bare metal performance passing through a GPU, a USB controller, and an NVMe drive for boot
hardwaresofton 6y ago
How does the world eventually come to realize that there are other reasonable choices for OS? Do we have to get cool people to use Linux? Is it that once enough people say "oh I don't have that problem, my computer is X" (where X is either "a mac" or "a linux" or something else) that it starts to take hold that if people want to not have this kind of thing happen that they should switch their operating system? Is it even possible for this to ever happen? It seems like there's a race between operating systems that give you ownership and those that don't, and if operating systems that don't give you true ownership of your machine get better/non-intrusive enough to be essentially invisible, there will never be a need/pain-point high enough for people to want operating systems that value this ownership/self-determination. In my nightmare scenario, everyone uses chromebooks, writes code on remote IDEs, programs with rough edges developed by amateurs never see the light of day, and it all works beautifully for the WALL-E-esque end user.
- skohan 6y ago
  Honestly I think we need more hardware vendors shipping computers pre-installed with Linux for this to happen. 99% of casual users are just not going to go into their UEFI settings and boot from a USB drive to change their operating system.
  - roywashere 6y ago
    UEFI & Linux mostly 'just works' nowadays. It is not a problem nor a barrier anymore, except for exotic situations maybe.
    - rzzzt 6y ago
      Replace "UEFI setttings" with "boot menu" in parent's comment -- they are talking about the very first steps required to install an alternative/second operating system to the machine, which definitely is a barrier to new users.
    - skohan 6y ago
      Can you install Linux on a Windows PC without leaving Windows nowadays? I think the maximum you can expect from a casual user is to click a link to download an installer, and then to go through a wizard. But I would wager to guess even a lot of users over 30 would need a friend or relative who is "good with computers" to attempt even this.
skohan 6y ago
This kind of thing is exactly the reason I've gradually booted less and less into Windows on my media PC, to the point I'm using Linux 99% of the time. MS products always seem to prioritize corporate interests at the expense of user experience. To give an example, I got a graphics card with ray tracing capabilities, and I wanted to try the Minecraft RTX beta to see what this ray tracing thing was all about. In order to install it, I needed to create an account in this special XBox program, and then I had to delete and re-install the Minecraft application several times in order for the windows store to install the correct version. I think I rebooted the entire computer at least 3 times in the process. And on reboot, after signing up for this "insider" program, I got a new prompt about sending my usage data back to MS. Once I did get it installed, I found that the Minecraft home-screen is now a garish display designed to put micro-transactions in front of you, to the point I had to hunt a bit for how to start a new game. After all of this the RTX portion turned out to be a half-finished mess, and I had to read a tutorial online to figure out how to even access RTX content. So basically the user experience I had, in trying to play a game for children, felt akin to being forced to walk down a dark alley and shaken down by MS in order to access the content I wanted. Honestly it's part of the reason I'm not a big fan of VSCode. The "suggested" popup feature just seems like it follows this trend of MS finding ways to put content in front of the user without asking, and I'm just not confident it's not going to be abused in the future to up-sell me on Azure services or something.
- literallycancer 6y ago
  Depending on your distro there are Code OSS builds with Microsoft cruft removed.
  - thefunnyman 6y ago
    VSCodium is good for this and has packages on many popular distributions.
unnouinceput 6y ago
Pi-Hole and WPD. These 2 tools are a must on any personal computer. Pi-Hole also is good overall even if you don't use Win computers. As for ones at your work, that's not your problem if the company you work for has incompetents in IT department. Show your boss the problem and get him involved, that's his job to make sure you have the correct tools for your work.
jimbob45 6y ago
I noticed MS force-installed Skype onto everyone’s computers halfway through the pandemic and added it to the started-up program list on boot. I really thought that they’d have learned their lesson with IE.
- meditative 6y ago
  Skype in not installed on my Surface Book, so not sure about everyone. edit: I have some fairly strict settings on my laptop, so maybe that stopped it. I also have Office365 so that could be related too.
sz4kerto 6y ago
Well, this is how it goes. Google/MS/Apple/Facebook/etc. are huge companies with extremely high costs (i.e. paying their expensive developers). They need to make a lot of money in one way or another. So, you can choose your poison, depending on your preferences, financial status, etc. The dimensions: - privacy - sneaky practices like what the article expains - one-off price of e.g. hardware - recurring price of e.g. services - freedom - stability of services - control over your devices - control over your data - seamless integrations Apple: high integration, high stability, high privacy, high price of hw and services, low freedom, low control over devices, high control over data, low amount of sneaky practices MS: low integration, medium privacy, high amount of sneaky practices, low price of hw, medium price of services, high freedom (odd thing to say), high stability, medium/high control over devices, medium control over your data Google: low privacy, medium sneaky practices, low price of hw, low price of services, high/medium freedom, low stability, high/medium control over devices, low control over data, medium integration You can't get all the good things at once, unfortunately.
- ship_it 6y ago
  GNU/Linux: medium integration, medium stability, high privacy, low price of hw and services, high freedom, high control over devices, high control over data, low amount of sneaky practices Your choice.
  - sz4kerto 6y ago
    Almost - integration of Linux devices with other ecosystems is the worst of all, unfortunately. As mentioned above: using Linux as a means of keeping control over your software only makes sense if you don't rely on cloud services that are worse from the perspective of freedom than a Windows or a Mac.
    - koonsolo 6y ago
      Not my experience. One time the hard drive of my Mac Mini crashed. I lost all my mp3s. Fortunately, they were all stored on my iPod, so I could just get them from there. On Mac: There was an application that could do that, but Apple sued them and so was not available anymore. On Windows: Was not able to get those mp3's out (don't remember why exactly) On Linux: Was able to mount it and get those files out with some Open Source iTunes clone. At that point, I totally ditched Apple.
schappim 6y ago
Makes this tweet by Patrick Collison (Stripe CEO) on “Re-Thinking the Desktop OS” even more relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24783387 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24783387
LoSboccacc 6y ago
look, I don't condone Microsoft for doing this to home users, but all these people should just stop using window home for work if they value their tool ownership, instead of cheapening out. you get what you pay for, I guess.
- maxgashkov 6y ago
  You're subjected to this on any edition and on any hardware, no matter the price. There are deferment options, yes, but now way to disable rebooting for update when they run out.
  - LoSboccacc 6y ago
    how does this fud get a pass on hacker news? https://i.imgur.com/vncSAEG.png https://i.imgur.com/vncSAEG.png you can finely control restart policies.
  - genocidicbunny 6y ago
    Metered connection setting + GPO setting say otherwise. I haven't had W10 reboot for updates without me explicitly doing the updates on my time since...that one time when I first got it and forgot to tweak the GPOs. Pro and Enterprise are also largely intended to be used with AD and a domain, and thus even more control can be exerted onto them via the controller.
okasaki 6y ago
Same thing Mozilla does with Firefox - when it updates, it refuses to load new pages or reload existing ones, instead the tab shows a message saying that they require me to restart firefox (promising to re-open all my tabs, but some config on my version must be prevending that because it doesn't work). When it does restart, it's often accompanied by flashing up some Mozilla property in the UI like pocket or lockwise that I really don't want.
- shultays 6y ago
  There should be an option to "reopen last session" under history iirc
- ajvs 6y ago
  Firefox doesn't force you to update however. I just update & restart it simultaneously whenever I want.
vinhboy 6y ago
I just moved from MacOS to Windows for development last month to try it out. Software migration was seamless, but driver issues and this reboot problem is nuts. For the last week, every morning I wake up, all my editors, terminals, servers, etc... are closed because it rebooted. There is an entire stackoverflow thread on hacks to avoid it because there is no official way to prevent it. I thought my Macbook Pro was bad usb-c issues were bad, this thing is worse!
- aszen 6y ago
  Windows is ultimately not good for development, yes there is wsl2 but that can't manage your actual operating system. You end up having to do things twice on such setups. So while being more flexible they ultimately mean more maintenance. For a developer doing anything in Linux is simply one right command way, you manage the desktop the same way you manage your servers. Driver issues are way less common for older stable hardware.
  - realusername 6y ago
    They have made a lot of effort on improving the platform though, I changed my opinion about developing on Windows from "unmanageable" as it was before to just "not great" now. I would still not use it for a dev machine but the improvements are there and visible.
- munchbunny 6y ago
  If this is your personal computer, go into the settings and set updates to manual install. Then set yourself a calendar reminder for the second Tuesday of each month and do a manual update and restart on that day. That should get you past most of the forced update reboots, because it’s usually “patch Tuesday” updates that force reboots. Not saying this is a good thing or excuse for the behavior. It’s just how you can get past the particular issue.
malikNF 6y ago
Reading some of the comments I agree that replacing something like Windows is not easy. But I think there are a lot of areas where FOSS is becoming a clear answer. Think of the jobs that require people to use a cloud based software for 90% of their work, these jobs just need a good browser like Firefox and a office suit like LibreOffice[1]. Take 2D/3D design work. 10 Years ago it was almost impossile to get any decent 2D/3D work done on foss now there are powerful tools like GIMP[2], Inkscape[3], Scribus[4], and Blender[5], Godot[6]. I agree the non FOSS alternatives are a lot more smoother than the FOSS alternatives, but this is a compromise worth making when we consider how user hostile some software companies have become in the recent years and if more people turn to FOSS their pain points can be converted in to tools that helps us all improve FOSS. We are at a time when a few software companies have so much power they are even able to play with our ability to participate in a democracy and I think its our responsibility as software folk (most of us here) to help guide people in the FOSS direction than trying to nudge everyone away from it because of a few pain points. [1]https://www.libreoffice.org/ https://www.libreoffice.org/ [2]https://www.gimp.org/ https://www.gimp.org/ [3]https://inkscape.org https://inkscape.org [4]https://www.scribus.net/ https://www.scribus.net/ [5]https://www.blender.org/ https://www.blender.org/ [6]https://godotengine.org/ https://godotengine.org/
- sz4kerto 6y ago
  > Think of the jobs that require people to use a cloud based software for 90% of their work, these jobs just need a good browser like Firefox and a office suit like LibreOffice[1]. Okay, but what do you win, really? Are you going to use Google Apps or Microsoft 365? The exact same thing is going to happen (or is happening) there already. I think that replacing somewhat flawed, non-OSS local systems with OSS 'thin clients' that connect to fully closed, centrally managed cloud services is a really bad choice if you want to regain control.
  - ajvs 6y ago
    Baby steps. Swapping for a Firefox and LibrrOffice (which also has a web version) is a big improvement in privacy already. By having this all-or-nothing mindset people don't ever take the first steps towards taking privacy seriously.
mkl95 6y ago
As a full stack developer working from home, using Windows as my main OS would be a very painful experience. My Windows usage has been limited to Firefox and Steam for years, and I couldn't be happier with the current state of desktop Linux (for power users, that is).
formerly_proven 6y ago
Oh I remember the full-screen Edge thing, because it happened on a few machines I had to RDP into. Turns out the animation of the IE/edge logos fusing is so incredibly slow and not based on wall-clock time (number of frames perhaps?) that the RDP connection became completely unresponsive for five minutes or so until the Microsoft crapware stopped animating and could be ctrlshiftescaped out of.
shultays 6y ago
My copy of microsoft rarely asks me to update and it does that by making a schedule. OP was probably ignoring those for a while. I dont remember windows forcefully updating at all Those updates probably includes the bloatware microsoft adding and also needed security updates, but mentioning that wouldnt be as click baity. And this is a bloatware I am ok with. Takes no space and they are needed programs. And if you are using notepad (which does not save your files automaticly) to write important stuff you deserve to lose them to be honest. Perhaps next time he will use microsoft word that was forcefully installed :) There are so many other alternatives even if you ignore online ones.
skocznymroczny 6y ago
I never had any real issues with Windows when it comes to updates. And I find the experience on Windows much more productive than any Linux distribution. Windows has a cohesive interface, and only one interface, so there is no issue of applications looking completely out of place. It's far more stable than any Linux desktop. A GPU hang in Windows is usually a black screen for few seconds and a message "Graphics driver had to be restarted", in Linux it takes down the entire OS with it and needs a reboot. Apt-get breaks every few weeks and when it breaks you have to google obscure solutions to fix a hanging lock file or broken dependencies. And most of the solutions are of the kind "well, it works in that other distro". Except when you switch to that distro something else doesn't work because there are hundreds of distros, some of them with their own package managers. No thanks, I'll stay with Windows for now. Ironically I think Microsoft would have the best shot at making a workable Linux. Kind of like Google hid Linux underneath Android and ChromeOS, the same way Microsoft could make Lindows which hides every nasty Linux bits and exposes a consistent environment.
- wazoox 6y ago
  > Apt-get breaks every few weeks At this point, I must say it: either you're lying, or you're pulling this from your rear end. That's true that apt-get was hit and miss in Debian around 2003/2004, and in Ubuntu maybe around 2008/9. But if nowadays you have "breaks every few weeks" than either your hardware is broken, or you installed custom versions of core libraries by hand, or you're running Debian Experimental (even "unstable" have been very solid for at least the past 5 years). Let's get serious, would you? I mean you can like Windows all you want. But don't spurt utter nonsense, please. If what you say was true, the internet would be broken half of the time.
phreack 6y ago
For ages, every 5 years or so I attempt to move away to Linux. I've done it about three times already and each one was a different kind of hell of new terminology I could not understand at the time (what the hell is a swap folder?), core features that broke randomly (why is my left speaker mute, after plugging a second monitor), software that failed or wouldn't run (games, photoshop), etc. Every time I ran to get help to the internet, communities always tended to be hostile or just arcane (oh you obviously need to open up a terminal and run 'xgrt -y -r <your resolution>' -- what in the world is a terminal?). Windows just works, it's bundled with every PC ever, and it's hard to want to leave that for something so much more difficult. Nowadays, I know I could get a Linux box up and running without issue, and that friction is an order of magnitude lower than it was a decade ago, and I'm itching towards trying once more given that these thousand cuts in Windows are killing me, but it's gonna take time to gather up the drive to undertake the jump.
- martin_bech 6y ago
  OSX, it just works, even more than windows.
  - phreack 6y ago
    That's sadly not a viable option in Latin America due to cost. A laptop that's like generation or two old might go for $1k, maybe more.
- Chyzwar 6y ago
  You want to use linux. Check first if your hardware is supported. 5 min of googling and you would have perfect experience. You take normal distro like Ubuntu/Fedora follow default install and you are good to go. I use Linux for the last 7 years. Zero issues so far. I have dual bot for gaming and windows have more hardware issues than Linux. On Windows my Wi-Fi card would sometimes fail to start.
- sjy 6y ago
  Similar experience here – I tried desktop Linux in 2003, 2008 and 2013 but couldn’t handle it and switched back to either Windows or macOS as my main OS. I tried again in 2018 after upgrading my Windows hardware and being told yet again that activation had failed and I’d have to call Microsoft. Now I use Arch. My desktop still breaks regularly (eg. I just spent a week not being able to use the terminal properly because alacritty was crashing on launch), but I had similar issues on Windows (eg. all Microsoft Store apps, including the calculator, crashing on launch for a month). Arch gives me useful error messages, a place where humans respond to my bug reports, and freedom from licensing bullshit.
spockz 6y ago
I installed Fedora Workstation on my desktop the other weekend. The performance and simplicity is staggering. The only things I’m missing so far are iterm2 and keychain synced over iCloud.
INTPenis 6y ago
Two reasons I still have a Windows disk, or VM. 1. Freedom to play any game. 2. Work uses a Windows specific VPN software. Absolutely no other reason. It's the main source of frustration in my computer-related lifestyle. I firmly believe that unless you have incredible insight, or incredibly expensive certifications, Windows is absolutely worthless to any advanced power user who wants control over their computer.
thdrdt 6y ago
Last week my thermostat had an update. After a reboot it showed an ad on the homescreen replacing a tile I put there. What is going on in this world that some people think this is ok? I will never update the device again and disconnect it from the internet. So the people who thought it was a good idea gained absolutely nothing. It is also the reason I keep using Linux.
throwaway13337 6y ago
Is there a way to completely disable automatic updates and the automatic restart with it? I've done a lot of registry flag management, services disabling, other settings - whatever I can find from stack exchange, reddit, or even microsoft's own answers (they're terrible). Nothing seems to work with modern windows 10.
derixithy 6y ago
I'm on linux for a good 10 years, even my wife switch over at some point after forced uodates and more slowness. My kids don't even know what windows is, they happily use linux with whatever desktop i provide. My wife even installs her own favourite distro herself. My dad switched back to windows because he missed his favourite apps, which i could not find a good alternative for (like Windows Movie Maker).
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
noxer 6y ago
Free OS = you are the product Use the proper version of windows if you dont want that crap.
- znpy 6y ago
  The irony is that most people PAY for the OS license, either explicitly or implicitly (it's part of the cost of the computer).
znpy 6y ago
Microsoft continues the war against its own users.
jpxw 6y ago
It’s got to the point now where I find Windows unbearable to use. It feels like more mental energy to run Windows than it does to run Linux, and that’s saying a lot. I now recommend anybody who asks to just buy a Mac instead. Yeah, you’ll pay a couple of hundred pounds more. But you will thank yourself later.
02020202 6y ago
Windows 10 used to boot up out of hibernation in the middle of the night, do something, sometimes restart itself and hibernate again...so all my opened programs and context was lost and i though i had a ghost in the house. I got fed up with it one day and simply forcefully disabled windows updates. It has been over a year and a half and I had ZERO problems since then.
animal531 6y ago
Just block updates (I use WinUpdatesDisabler). You lose access to the Microsoft store (oh no); but after that it really doesn't matter.
hnarn 6y ago
I use both Windows and Linux, and I am aware things like this will happen to my Windows installation. What I don’t understand is how anyone willfully using Windows can be surprised by this. Anyone with a minor amount of tech knowledge should know this is the way Windows 10 works by now. People who write technical news articles should definitely not be surprised, so I’m assuming they’re feigning surprise for the sake of writing an article about it. What I’m trying to say is, if you use Windows you accept that you’re using a walled garden. If you don’t want to, use Linux, or use both. But what’s the point of driving activism towards change? There’s already options if you care, and it’s not like any of the two models are completely without flaws.
BMSmnqXAE4yfe1 6y ago
It takes a few minutes to find a setting that postpones those updates. Compare this to hours I have spent to install anything as complicated as graphics drivers on Ubuntu. Besides, I hate command line since my MicroVAX days.
throwaway010 6y ago
> Why does this keeps happening Because you didn't move to linux when it happened for the first time, you simply allow it to happen
WillAdams 6y ago
At least unwanted apps aren't as onerous as actual behavioural changes --- Fall Creators Update crippled my active stylus making it impossible to select text or draw in Macromedia Freehand/MX using a Staedtler Noris Digital Stylus: https://github.com/TheJoeFin/Windows10-Community/issues/17 https://github.com/TheJoeFin/Windows10-Community/issues/17 I've had to roll back twice now and the only technique I've found which works to block updates on Windows 10 Home is to have the C: drive so full that MS can't download the update.
donclark 6y ago
I dont have any new apps on my machine. Is it because I modified the hosts file with https://www.someonewhocares.org/hosts/ https://www.someonewhocares.org/hosts/
luord 6y ago
Reading these comments, I've noticed an interesting inversion of the usual pattern: 1. Some guy says something about Linux. 2. He gets several replies that are multiple variations of "well, Linux doesn't work for me!" In this case, it's Windows users mentioning how the issues in TFA don't happen to them. Maybe this will help some understand that replying with "for me, it's broken!" (Whether it's about Linux or Windows or anything else) is very likely not helpful at all, or completely pointless at worst, because it might be perfectly possible that it isn't broken for the people who made the original comments so there's not much discussion to be had. Maybe.
LockAndLol 6y ago
If you're still using Microsoft and annoyed by this and it's on your personal computer, well, you know what you have to do. If you won't, then... I don't know what to tell ya. Even worse is when nation-states use Windows in critical and sensitive systems. There's absolutely no guarantee Microsoft isn't siphoning out information. People think China is bad, but as Snowden showed us, the U.S has been proven to be worse in terms of cyber espionage.
simonblack 6y ago
Nonetheless, they’re the latest proof that Microsoft doesn’t respect your ownership of your own PC I've experienced MSFT's hubris for 35 years. Nothing has ever changed. That's why Windows has never, ever been my everyday desktop. Thank God I discovered UNIX in 1990.

264 points by adrian_mrd 6y ago

I was really pissed off days ago, when Windows 10 keeps prompting me pop-ups for updating several times when I was playing online game. I had to choose remind me 1 hour later because there was no other better option to defer it. I can only imagine how upset people would be when they have more serious jobs interrupted.

hirako2000 6y ago

Really, was it hard to see ads coming to the start menu? Since Windows 10 came out, the OS has become a search engine for stuff, ranking MS products highest of course. People and enterprises insist to use this OS calamity, despite the fact there are free and open source alternatives. I guess we will still see news about MS windows non sense in 2030

swinglock 6y ago
Enterprises don't use the shareware version of Windows.
- RealStickman_ 6y ago
  It shouldn't be about whether somebody uses the home/pro or enterprise version. It should be about whether they paid or not. I'm perfeclty fine with this behaviour on unactivated windows, but it shouldn't be happening in a product I paid for.
- rleigh 6y ago
  As if the "enterprise" version is much better. It's not. I had an unscheduled reboot losing all my work just this week. Taking that control away was the single most awful change ever made to Windows. It made it undependable and unreliable for everyone.
tralarpa 6y ago
> People and enterprises insist to use this OS calamity, despite the fact there are free and open source alternatives I would like so much to replace Windows with Linux on my laptop. But every time I try (which I do every 5 years or so, despite knowing better) it ends in tears and frustration. I don't even have exotic hardware. Just some mainstream Thinkpads and Dell laptops. Usually, I give up after literally (!) weeks of trying to get sound / hardware accelerated graphics / hibernation / power management / etc. working properly. Ironically, I get the best Linux experience with WSL or when I run it in a VM on top of Windows.
znpy 6y ago
> People and enterprises insist to use this OS calamity, despite the fact there are free and open source alternatives. I guess we will still see news about MS windows non sense in 2030 The fact is that Microsoft Office is still lightyears ahead of Open/Libre/Whatever-Office. And enterprises need that office suite. And the integration between Office, ActiveDirectory and Office365 (their cloud service) is just awesome, spot on. It's impressively good as a groupware solution. Outlook on Windows is fairly okay, and covers the needs of 99% of the office workers (Outlook on Mac OS is superb, by the way). The thing is: until the FOSS alternative becomes a no-brainer, enterprises will keep paying for Office, and thus for Windows.

Spearchucker 6y ago

This has happened to me too and I feel the same as the author about it. The real frustration is that I do a lot of consulting work for corporates and so Windows is a requirement. Plus of course that *nix doesn't have Office and that anything from Google behaves orders of magnitude worse than Microsoft's OS, and that I depend on Visual Sudio. I can't seem to find an ideal.

cehrlich 6y ago
It's far from ideal, but my solution is a Mac (obviously MacOS has its own problems, but they're problems that don't bother me as much personally, and it could of course also be replaced by Linux, some sort of *nix, etc) with a Windows VM. The VM has the bare minimum amount of software I need, access to a few folders from the host OS, other than that it's stripped to the bare minimum. It doesn't "fix" Windows, but the issues are much less annoying when Windows is just a launcher for the handful of things that I need it for.
- Spearchucker 6y ago
  You remind me that this exact setup was proposed to me before, and as a solution it's possiblely the most appealing of all. Except for cost, and as an unnecessary but fun distraction, gaming.

zamalek 6y ago

I am not denying that this is happening to people, because the facts are clear: it absolutely is. I just don't understand how it doesn't happen to me. I don't leave updates hanging about for weeks and months, which explains how forced reboots are not a problem. Forced reboots are your own stupid fault, I have no pity at all. What doesn't make sense is that I get none of this crapware on my system. It's clearly possible to disable this garbage, I don't know how I have done it without restorting to any scripts. Edit: to clarify, as someone who very recently installed Win10 and Office. You do not have to reboot to install Office. Windows had to reboot because some critical update had to be installed, and office so happened to be installed at the same time. Don't get me wrong, I uninstall a few things after a fresh Windows install (edit 2: and that is unacceptable behavior from Microsoft). This article, however, is way off with the primary complaint: the reboot. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Allow Windows to update, because it really does know best. Edit 3: this is the Verge, who put bloody thermal paste onto a CPU when the AIO had it pre-installed. There isn't a high bar of journalism here.

bnt 6y ago
Maybe you disabled internet on your machine? /s
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
matsemann 6y ago
I'm in the same boat. Maybe how my work has configured my laptop or something, some group policy?
- pvg 6y ago
  You can definitely turn off the random reboot with policies, on Pro and up.
  - breakingcups 6y ago
    Yep, if you're a home user, get bent. Your wishes don't matter to Microsoft.

setzer22 6y ago

EDIT: Just to be very sincere and transparent. The content of this post has been removed to avoid further discussion. I do not think my kind of views are welcome in this community.

m-ee 6y ago
This is a very software view of things. You’d be hard pressed to get by with whatever the FOSS equivalents of CAD/EDA software are.
- etaioinshrdlu 6y ago
  This is very correct. And this is specific to professional use cases. Hobbyists can get by with FOSS tools.
- iExploder 6y ago
  how about KiCad as replacement for EDA? for CAD, yeah, that is really the last thing to be ported to linux afaik
- Haga 6y ago
  We run it on vms in our shop, windows behaves if frozen in time.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Kliment 6y ago
  I do professional electronics design and some mechanical design. I use 100% FLOSS tools. KiCAD nightly is currently slightly less buggy than the closed crap, and about as capable. The major difference is that bugs I report get fixed within days, which I've never experienced with any of the commercial offerings. I use stable KiCAD for most projects, and nightly for things that need advanced functionality. It's absolutely excellent. The mechanical design story is not as great, but FreeCAD is improving at a decent pace and now that Fusion is crippleware a lot of people are looking into FreeCAD, and complaining about how it works, and some are contributing and improving it. KiCAD went through this cycle due to a large influx of Eagle users when Eagle got eaten by the beast, and came out dramatically, shockingly improved. If the same thing happens to FreeCAD in the next few years I doubt we'll have any excuse to go back. So I don't feel "hard pressed to get by" - I feel more productive than before I switched to FLOSS tools.

jmcs 6y ago

There's no such thing as your Windows PC, at least for home users. There are only Microsoft's Windows PCs and they are very open about it.

failuser 6y ago
They gave away their game renaming “My Computer” to “This PC”
names_are_hard 6y ago
And if you're an enterprise user, it's not your PC either. It belongs to your IT department. (Of course everyone knows this, but in the context of this conversation the relevant part is that it'll do updates when your IT people dictate, regardless of how convenient it is or isn't for you the user.) I imagine there are good reasons in force to update, like security patches. But I'd be lying if I didn't find it frustrating that my work laptop needs to update at what always feels like an inopportune time. In general, when I am prompted about a software update I default to selecting "not now" (I've been refusing Google Photos' nagging for what feels like forever now). What does it say about our industry that users have developed an automatic aversion to updates? Shouldn't updates be something exciting? Interesting? Somewhere along the line we burned our relationship with users and lost their trust.
- Falkon1313 6y ago
  Or at least seamless. The industry lost the distinction between updates and upgrades some years ago. If after an update, everything still worked properly, people wouldn't have an aversion to it. But in an era where even a minor version 'security update' adds and removes features and entire applications, sometimes causes loss of data, and may totally change the UI, people are naturally wary. Nobody wants to spend hours trying to get their computer back to the way it was yesterday, redo all the work they were doing, or learn new workflows when they have a deadline tomorrow or an important presentation to do this afternoon. When updates have become malware, people will block them.

Aldqueath 6y ago

we use windows 10 at work and i also noticed that when an update is available and you want to shut down the computer, you can choose between "shutdown" and "apply updates then shutdown", however recently even doing just "shutdown" will still apply the updates. happened to me twice now, and to a few colleagues as well

tiku 6y ago

It even removed apps. Postman was gone after my update..

dvdbloc 6y ago

Are there preferred ways to disable this sort of behavior? Sort of make Windows home/pro behave more like the enterprise version which I hear is devoid of this BS?

trav4225 6y ago
Uninstalling should do the trick. ;-)
bleepblorp 6y ago
Enterprise still does forced reboots. The only way to completely prevent them is to completely incapacitate Windows Update and forego all updates. It's not a good idea to discuss techniques to disable Windows Update in open fourms as Microsoft has a habit of sabotaging anti-update techniques that become too well known.

peter_retief 6y ago

Why do people still use Microsoft(MS)? Some companies force people to use MS but then the Linux desktop offerings have never been great. Of course serious power users use Mac. I only use Linux but have been forced to use MS with some development jobs. Seeing from both sides I can say the MS based development companies were amateurish while the Unix/Linux/Mac were mostly professional.

touristtam 6y ago
Usually people heavily invested in MSOffice (either through licenses or through personal experience).
- peter_retief 6y ago
  It is exactly that, licensing, training, certificates and experience.
coverj 6y ago
> Why do people still use Microsoft(MS)? for me, Steam for video games and Visual Studio
- FullyFunctional 6y ago
  Proton is getting pretty good (Windows games on Linux) and VS Code is pretty fantastic (supported on almost all the platforms I use). I do have a Windows installation, but I boot it up less than one a month.
UglyToad 6y ago
I think OS discussions often become a breeding ground for people to feel offended because people have different preferences but: I just don't find Linux (or Mac) a compelling alternative. I can do everything I possibly need on Windows; Visual Studio, gaming, VS code, docker, node, browsing, whatever. I absolutely think Linux is so much better for servers since it can all be done from the command line..NET Core was a game changer in that regard, but I'm still perfectly fine with Windows desktop. I think it comes down to what you prefer, are you a tinkerer or just a user? I just want my desktop to run, I don't care what drivers I'm running or anything like that. Windows comes with the computer, I'm used to it and I've never had the problems described by people. I can plug in any peripheral and it just goes, it's frictionless for me. As far as restarting I'm fine with it, I don't run my computer 24 hours a day, I shut it down after work until I need it for gaming or other reasons, I'm not running software for the space shuttle so I don't need 10 nines uptime

BrandoElFollito 6y ago

There are two aspects of this: - the ad part that is truly awful. If this indeed happens I can easy understand the rage of users (I have a corporate Windows 10 so I do not see that behaviour) - the forced restart part: from the perspective of someone working in information security: good job. People do not give a shit about security and when begged to reboot quickly (= within, say, 3 days) they have all kind of important things to do instead for months. I do not care if their machine is hacked and all their stuff stolen. What I care about is that this machine becomes a part of a bot that is either poses a risk to others (DDoS) or sends out crap (phishing, spam). Such machines should be actively hunted and taken down. So MS forcing these users to have their PC rebooted even in the middle of their work (after several attempts to have it done by the user) is great.

touristtam 6y ago
Rebooting during working hours, not great at all. Also rebooting without saving the state of the applications opened while the user is working away, not great either. There are reason why security is taking a back seat, business needs are greater than the risk incurred by user bad behaviour. BTW how is it that Windows 10 still needs more reboot to update any parts of itself, than a regular Linux distro? The update cycle on my Windows 10 machine is maddening compared to my Linux workstation.
- 2fast4you 6y ago
  It’s really odd that Windows is reboot during working hours. It knows when I’m working, it can detect my habits. Also; Windows reboots so much probably because of legacy. It was never designed to live reload important components. Why Word needs a reboot, I’ll never know.
  - bleepblorp 6y ago
    Generally, forced reboots caused by applications are due to a need to replace shared components that are in use by background processes.
- 6y ago

zxcb1 6y ago

Use Linux and virtualization for peace of mind.

2fast4you 6y ago
Windows with PCIE pass through for gaming is so nice. I get nearly bare metal performance passing through a GPU, a USB controller, and an NVMe drive for boot

hardwaresofton 6y ago

How does the world eventually come to realize that there are other reasonable choices for OS? Do we have to get cool people to use Linux? Is it that once enough people say "oh I don't have that problem, my computer is X" (where X is either "a mac" or "a linux" or something else) that it starts to take hold that if people want to not have this kind of thing happen that they should switch their operating system? Is it even possible for this to ever happen? It seems like there's a race between operating systems that give you ownership and those that don't, and if operating systems that don't give you true ownership of your machine get better/non-intrusive enough to be essentially invisible, there will never be a need/pain-point high enough for people to want operating systems that value this ownership/self-determination. In my nightmare scenario, everyone uses chromebooks, writes code on remote IDEs, programs with rough edges developed by amateurs never see the light of day, and it all works beautifully for the WALL-E-esque end user.

skohan 6y ago
Honestly I think we need more hardware vendors shipping computers pre-installed with Linux for this to happen. 99% of casual users are just not going to go into their UEFI settings and boot from a USB drive to change their operating system.
- roywashere 6y ago
  UEFI & Linux mostly 'just works' nowadays. It is not a problem nor a barrier anymore, except for exotic situations maybe.
  - rzzzt 6y ago
    Replace "UEFI setttings" with "boot menu" in parent's comment -- they are talking about the very first steps required to install an alternative/second operating system to the machine, which definitely is a barrier to new users.
  - skohan 6y ago
    Can you install Linux on a Windows PC without leaving Windows nowadays? I think the maximum you can expect from a casual user is to click a link to download an installer, and then to go through a wizard. But I would wager to guess even a lot of users over 30 would need a friend or relative who is "good with computers" to attempt even this.

skohan 6y ago

This kind of thing is exactly the reason I've gradually booted less and less into Windows on my media PC, to the point I'm using Linux 99% of the time. MS products always seem to prioritize corporate interests at the expense of user experience. To give an example, I got a graphics card with ray tracing capabilities, and I wanted to try the Minecraft RTX beta to see what this ray tracing thing was all about. In order to install it, I needed to create an account in this special XBox program, and then I had to delete and re-install the Minecraft application several times in order for the windows store to install the correct version. I think I rebooted the entire computer at least 3 times in the process. And on reboot, after signing up for this "insider" program, I got a new prompt about sending my usage data back to MS. Once I did get it installed, I found that the Minecraft home-screen is now a garish display designed to put micro-transactions in front of you, to the point I had to hunt a bit for how to start a new game. After all of this the RTX portion turned out to be a half-finished mess, and I had to read a tutorial online to figure out how to even access RTX content. So basically the user experience I had, in trying to play a game for children, felt akin to being forced to walk down a dark alley and shaken down by MS in order to access the content I wanted. Honestly it's part of the reason I'm not a big fan of VSCode. The "suggested" popup feature just seems like it follows this trend of MS finding ways to put content in front of the user without asking, and I'm just not confident it's not going to be abused in the future to up-sell me on Azure services or something.

literallycancer 6y ago
Depending on your distro there are Code OSS builds with Microsoft cruft removed.
- thefunnyman 6y ago
  VSCodium is good for this and has packages on many popular distributions.

unnouinceput 6y ago

Pi-Hole and WPD. These 2 tools are a must on any personal computer. Pi-Hole also is good overall even if you don't use Win computers. As for ones at your work, that's not your problem if the company you work for has incompetents in IT department. Show your boss the problem and get him involved, that's his job to make sure you have the correct tools for your work.

jimbob45 6y ago

I noticed MS force-installed Skype onto everyone’s computers halfway through the pandemic and added it to the started-up program list on boot. I really thought that they’d have learned their lesson with IE.

meditative 6y ago
Skype in not installed on my Surface Book, so not sure about everyone. edit: I have some fairly strict settings on my laptop, so maybe that stopped it. I also have Office365 so that could be related too.

sz4kerto 6y ago

Well, this is how it goes. Google/MS/Apple/Facebook/etc. are huge companies with extremely high costs (i.e. paying their expensive developers). They need to make a lot of money in one way or another. So, you can choose your poison, depending on your preferences, financial status, etc. The dimensions: - privacy - sneaky practices like what the article expains - one-off price of e.g. hardware - recurring price of e.g. services - freedom - stability of services - control over your devices - control over your data - seamless integrations Apple: high integration, high stability, high privacy, high price of hw and services, low freedom, low control over devices, high control over data, low amount of sneaky practices MS: low integration, medium privacy, high amount of sneaky practices, low price of hw, medium price of services, high freedom (odd thing to say), high stability, medium/high control over devices, medium control over your data Google: low privacy, medium sneaky practices, low price of hw, low price of services, high/medium freedom, low stability, high/medium control over devices, low control over data, medium integration You can't get all the good things at once, unfortunately.

ship_it 6y ago
GNU/Linux: medium integration, medium stability, high privacy, low price of hw and services, high freedom, high control over devices, high control over data, low amount of sneaky practices Your choice.
- sz4kerto 6y ago
  Almost - integration of Linux devices with other ecosystems is the worst of all, unfortunately. As mentioned above: using Linux as a means of keeping control over your software only makes sense if you don't rely on cloud services that are worse from the perspective of freedom than a Windows or a Mac.
  - koonsolo 6y ago
    Not my experience. One time the hard drive of my Mac Mini crashed. I lost all my mp3s. Fortunately, they were all stored on my iPod, so I could just get them from there. On Mac: There was an application that could do that, but Apple sued them and so was not available anymore. On Windows: Was not able to get those mp3's out (don't remember why exactly) On Linux: Was able to mount it and get those files out with some Open Source iTunes clone. At that point, I totally ditched Apple.

schappim 6y ago

Makes this tweet by Patrick Collison (Stripe CEO) on “Re-Thinking the Desktop OS” even more relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24783387 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24783387

LoSboccacc 6y ago

look, I don't condone Microsoft for doing this to home users, but all these people should just stop using window home for work if they value their tool ownership, instead of cheapening out. you get what you pay for, I guess.

maxgashkov 6y ago
You're subjected to this on any edition and on any hardware, no matter the price. There are deferment options, yes, but now way to disable rebooting for update when they run out.
- LoSboccacc 6y ago
  how does this fud get a pass on hacker news? https://i.imgur.com/vncSAEG.png https://i.imgur.com/vncSAEG.png you can finely control restart policies.
- genocidicbunny 6y ago
  Metered connection setting + GPO setting say otherwise. I haven't had W10 reboot for updates without me explicitly doing the updates on my time since...that one time when I first got it and forgot to tweak the GPOs. Pro and Enterprise are also largely intended to be used with AD and a domain, and thus even more control can be exerted onto them via the controller.

okasaki 6y ago

Same thing Mozilla does with Firefox - when it updates, it refuses to load new pages or reload existing ones, instead the tab shows a message saying that they require me to restart firefox (promising to re-open all my tabs, but some config on my version must be prevending that because it doesn't work). When it does restart, it's often accompanied by flashing up some Mozilla property in the UI like pocket or lockwise that I really don't want.

shultays 6y ago
There should be an option to "reopen last session" under history iirc
ajvs 6y ago
Firefox doesn't force you to update however. I just update & restart it simultaneously whenever I want.

vinhboy 6y ago

I just moved from MacOS to Windows for development last month to try it out. Software migration was seamless, but driver issues and this reboot problem is nuts. For the last week, every morning I wake up, all my editors, terminals, servers, etc... are closed because it rebooted. There is an entire stackoverflow thread on hacks to avoid it because there is no official way to prevent it. I thought my Macbook Pro was bad usb-c issues were bad, this thing is worse!

aszen 6y ago
Windows is ultimately not good for development, yes there is wsl2 but that can't manage your actual operating system. You end up having to do things twice on such setups. So while being more flexible they ultimately mean more maintenance. For a developer doing anything in Linux is simply one right command way, you manage the desktop the same way you manage your servers. Driver issues are way less common for older stable hardware.
- realusername 6y ago
  They have made a lot of effort on improving the platform though, I changed my opinion about developing on Windows from "unmanageable" as it was before to just "not great" now. I would still not use it for a dev machine but the improvements are there and visible.
munchbunny 6y ago
If this is your personal computer, go into the settings and set updates to manual install. Then set yourself a calendar reminder for the second Tuesday of each month and do a manual update and restart on that day. That should get you past most of the forced update reboots, because it’s usually “patch Tuesday” updates that force reboots. Not saying this is a good thing or excuse for the behavior. It’s just how you can get past the particular issue.

malikNF 6y ago

Reading some of the comments I agree that replacing something like Windows is not easy. But I think there are a lot of areas where FOSS is becoming a clear answer. Think of the jobs that require people to use a cloud based software for 90% of their work, these jobs just need a good browser like Firefox and a office suit like LibreOffice[1]. Take 2D/3D design work. 10 Years ago it was almost impossile to get any decent 2D/3D work done on foss now there are powerful tools like GIMP[2], Inkscape[3], Scribus[4], and Blender[5], Godot[6]. I agree the non FOSS alternatives are a lot more smoother than the FOSS alternatives, but this is a compromise worth making when we consider how user hostile some software companies have become in the recent years and if more people turn to FOSS their pain points can be converted in to tools that helps us all improve FOSS. We are at a time when a few software companies have so much power they are even able to play with our ability to participate in a democracy and I think its our responsibility as software folk (most of us here) to help guide people in the FOSS direction than trying to nudge everyone away from it because of a few pain points. [1]https://www.libreoffice.org/ https://www.libreoffice.org/ [2]https://www.gimp.org/ https://www.gimp.org/ [3]https://inkscape.org https://inkscape.org [4]https://www.scribus.net/ https://www.scribus.net/ [5]https://www.blender.org/ https://www.blender.org/ [6]https://godotengine.org/ https://godotengine.org/

sz4kerto 6y ago
> Think of the jobs that require people to use a cloud based software for 90% of their work, these jobs just need a good browser like Firefox and a office suit like LibreOffice[1]. Okay, but what do you win, really? Are you going to use Google Apps or Microsoft 365? The exact same thing is going to happen (or is happening) there already. I think that replacing somewhat flawed, non-OSS local systems with OSS 'thin clients' that connect to fully closed, centrally managed cloud services is a really bad choice if you want to regain control.
- ajvs 6y ago
  Baby steps. Swapping for a Firefox and LibrrOffice (which also has a web version) is a big improvement in privacy already. By having this all-or-nothing mindset people don't ever take the first steps towards taking privacy seriously.

mkl95 6y ago

As a full stack developer working from home, using Windows as my main OS would be a very painful experience. My Windows usage has been limited to Firefox and Steam for years, and I couldn't be happier with the current state of desktop Linux (for power users, that is).

formerly_proven 6y ago

Oh I remember the full-screen Edge thing, because it happened on a few machines I had to RDP into. Turns out the animation of the IE/edge logos fusing is so incredibly slow and not based on wall-clock time (number of frames perhaps?) that the RDP connection became completely unresponsive for five minutes or so until the Microsoft crapware stopped animating and could be ctrlshiftescaped out of.

shultays 6y ago

My copy of microsoft rarely asks me to update and it does that by making a schedule. OP was probably ignoring those for a while. I dont remember windows forcefully updating at all Those updates probably includes the bloatware microsoft adding and also needed security updates, but mentioning that wouldnt be as click baity. And this is a bloatware I am ok with. Takes no space and they are needed programs. And if you are using notepad (which does not save your files automaticly) to write important stuff you deserve to lose them to be honest. Perhaps next time he will use microsoft word that was forcefully installed :) There are so many other alternatives even if you ignore online ones.

skocznymroczny 6y ago

I never had any real issues with Windows when it comes to updates. And I find the experience on Windows much more productive than any Linux distribution. Windows has a cohesive interface, and only one interface, so there is no issue of applications looking completely out of place. It's far more stable than any Linux desktop. A GPU hang in Windows is usually a black screen for few seconds and a message "Graphics driver had to be restarted", in Linux it takes down the entire OS with it and needs a reboot. Apt-get breaks every few weeks and when it breaks you have to google obscure solutions to fix a hanging lock file or broken dependencies. And most of the solutions are of the kind "well, it works in that other distro". Except when you switch to that distro something else doesn't work because there are hundreds of distros, some of them with their own package managers. No thanks, I'll stay with Windows for now. Ironically I think Microsoft would have the best shot at making a workable Linux. Kind of like Google hid Linux underneath Android and ChromeOS, the same way Microsoft could make Lindows which hides every nasty Linux bits and exposes a consistent environment.

wazoox 6y ago
> Apt-get breaks every few weeks At this point, I must say it: either you're lying, or you're pulling this from your rear end. That's true that apt-get was hit and miss in Debian around 2003/2004, and in Ubuntu maybe around 2008/9. But if nowadays you have "breaks every few weeks" than either your hardware is broken, or you installed custom versions of core libraries by hand, or you're running Debian Experimental (even "unstable" have been very solid for at least the past 5 years). Let's get serious, would you? I mean you can like Windows all you want. But don't spurt utter nonsense, please. If what you say was true, the internet would be broken half of the time.

phreack 6y ago

For ages, every 5 years or so I attempt to move away to Linux. I've done it about three times already and each one was a different kind of hell of new terminology I could not understand at the time (what the hell is a swap folder?), core features that broke randomly (why is my left speaker mute, after plugging a second monitor), software that failed or wouldn't run (games, photoshop), etc. Every time I ran to get help to the internet, communities always tended to be hostile or just arcane (oh you obviously need to open up a terminal and run 'xgrt -y -r <your resolution>' -- what in the world is a terminal?). Windows just works, it's bundled with every PC ever, and it's hard to want to leave that for something so much more difficult. Nowadays, I know I could get a Linux box up and running without issue, and that friction is an order of magnitude lower than it was a decade ago, and I'm itching towards trying once more given that these thousand cuts in Windows are killing me, but it's gonna take time to gather up the drive to undertake the jump.

martin_bech 6y ago
OSX, it just works, even more than windows.
- phreack 6y ago
  That's sadly not a viable option in Latin America due to cost. A laptop that's like generation or two old might go for $1k, maybe more.
Chyzwar 6y ago
You want to use linux. Check first if your hardware is supported. 5 min of googling and you would have perfect experience. You take normal distro like Ubuntu/Fedora follow default install and you are good to go. I use Linux for the last 7 years. Zero issues so far. I have dual bot for gaming and windows have more hardware issues than Linux. On Windows my Wi-Fi card would sometimes fail to start.
sjy 6y ago
Similar experience here – I tried desktop Linux in 2003, 2008 and 2013 but couldn’t handle it and switched back to either Windows or macOS as my main OS. I tried again in 2018 after upgrading my Windows hardware and being told yet again that activation had failed and I’d have to call Microsoft. Now I use Arch. My desktop still breaks regularly (eg. I just spent a week not being able to use the terminal properly because alacritty was crashing on launch), but I had similar issues on Windows (eg. all Microsoft Store apps, including the calculator, crashing on launch for a month). Arch gives me useful error messages, a place where humans respond to my bug reports, and freedom from licensing bullshit.

spockz 6y ago

I installed Fedora Workstation on my desktop the other weekend. The performance and simplicity is staggering. The only things I’m missing so far are iterm2 and keychain synced over iCloud.

INTPenis 6y ago

Two reasons I still have a Windows disk, or VM. 1. Freedom to play any game. 2. Work uses a Windows specific VPN software. Absolutely no other reason. It's the main source of frustration in my computer-related lifestyle. I firmly believe that unless you have incredible insight, or incredibly expensive certifications, Windows is absolutely worthless to any advanced power user who wants control over their computer.

thdrdt 6y ago

Last week my thermostat had an update. After a reboot it showed an ad on the homescreen replacing a tile I put there. What is going on in this world that some people think this is ok? I will never update the device again and disconnect it from the internet. So the people who thought it was a good idea gained absolutely nothing. It is also the reason I keep using Linux.

throwaway13337 6y ago

Is there a way to completely disable automatic updates and the automatic restart with it? I've done a lot of registry flag management, services disabling, other settings - whatever I can find from stack exchange, reddit, or even microsoft's own answers (they're terrible). Nothing seems to work with modern windows 10.

derixithy 6y ago

I'm on linux for a good 10 years, even my wife switch over at some point after forced uodates and more slowness. My kids don't even know what windows is, they happily use linux with whatever desktop i provide. My wife even installs her own favourite distro herself. My dad switched back to windows because he missed his favourite apps, which i could not find a good alternative for (like Windows Movie Maker).

deleted 6y ago

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noxer 6y ago

Free OS = you are the product Use the proper version of windows if you dont want that crap.

znpy 6y ago
The irony is that most people PAY for the OS license, either explicitly or implicitly (it's part of the cost of the computer).

znpy 6y ago

Microsoft continues the war against its own users.

jpxw 6y ago

It’s got to the point now where I find Windows unbearable to use. It feels like more mental energy to run Windows than it does to run Linux, and that’s saying a lot. I now recommend anybody who asks to just buy a Mac instead. Yeah, you’ll pay a couple of hundred pounds more. But you will thank yourself later.

02020202 6y ago

Windows 10 used to boot up out of hibernation in the middle of the night, do something, sometimes restart itself and hibernate again...so all my opened programs and context was lost and i though i had a ghost in the house. I got fed up with it one day and simply forcefully disabled windows updates. It has been over a year and a half and I had ZERO problems since then.

animal531 6y ago

Just block updates (I use WinUpdatesDisabler). You lose access to the Microsoft store (oh no); but after that it really doesn't matter.

hnarn 6y ago

I use both Windows and Linux, and I am aware things like this will happen to my Windows installation. What I don’t understand is how anyone willfully using Windows can be surprised by this. Anyone with a minor amount of tech knowledge should know this is the way Windows 10 works by now. People who write technical news articles should definitely not be surprised, so I’m assuming they’re feigning surprise for the sake of writing an article about it. What I’m trying to say is, if you use Windows you accept that you’re using a walled garden. If you don’t want to, use Linux, or use both. But what’s the point of driving activism towards change? There’s already options if you care, and it’s not like any of the two models are completely without flaws.

BMSmnqXAE4yfe1 6y ago

It takes a few minutes to find a setting that postpones those updates. Compare this to hours I have spent to install anything as complicated as graphics drivers on Ubuntu. Besides, I hate command line since my MicroVAX days.

throwaway010 6y ago

> Why does this keeps happening Because you didn't move to linux when it happened for the first time, you simply allow it to happen

WillAdams 6y ago

At least unwanted apps aren't as onerous as actual behavioural changes --- Fall Creators Update crippled my active stylus making it impossible to select text or draw in Macromedia Freehand/MX using a Staedtler Noris Digital Stylus: https://github.com/TheJoeFin/Windows10-Community/issues/17 https://github.com/TheJoeFin/Windows10-Community/issues/17 I've had to roll back twice now and the only technique I've found which works to block updates on Windows 10 Home is to have the C: drive so full that MS can't download the update.

donclark 6y ago

I dont have any new apps on my machine. Is it because I modified the hosts file with https://www.someonewhocares.org/hosts/ https://www.someonewhocares.org/hosts/

luord 6y ago

Reading these comments, I've noticed an interesting inversion of the usual pattern: 1. Some guy says something about Linux. 2. He gets several replies that are multiple variations of "well, Linux doesn't work for me!" In this case, it's Windows users mentioning how the issues in TFA don't happen to them. Maybe this will help some understand that replying with "for me, it's broken!" (Whether it's about Linux or Windows or anything else) is very likely not helpful at all, or completely pointless at worst, because it might be perfectly possible that it isn't broken for the people who made the original comments so there's not much discussion to be had. Maybe.

LockAndLol 6y ago

If you're still using Microsoft and annoyed by this and it's on your personal computer, well, you know what you have to do. If you won't, then... I don't know what to tell ya. Even worse is when nation-states use Windows in critical and sensitive systems. There's absolutely no guarantee Microsoft isn't siphoning out information. People think China is bad, but as Snowden showed us, the U.S has been proven to be worse in terms of cyber espionage.

simonblack 6y ago

Nonetheless, they’re the latest proof that Microsoft doesn’t respect your ownership of your own PC I've experienced MSFT's hubris for 35 years. Nothing has ever changed. That's why Windows has never, ever been my everyday desktop. Thank God I discovered UNIX in 1990.