4 ms·

There are two major problems with modern Windows. The first is coercion. Installing without a Microsoft (Outlook) account is more and more difficult. An attent

by chasil 7mo ago

There are two major problems with modern Windows. The first is coercion. Installing without a Microsoft (Outlook) account is more and more difficult. An attentive steward of Windows would allow older gui themes (xp, Win7 Aero, etc.) to be applied for the nostalgic. And there would be an easy control to disable all Copilot integration. Microsoft is coercive towards their customers with these and other actions. The second is incompetence. The Windows update process is intrusive, lengthy, and prone to repeatedly bricking unlucky PCs. Linux updates are far more pleasant. These are big problems, and I agree, it will take great institutional change to curb these abusive tendencies. I don't know if they can.

RobotToaster 7mo ago
The fact that Microsoft are doing zero nostalgia marketing is baffling to me. Put a clippy skin on copilot and people would probably install it voluntarily.
MaxikCZ 7mo ago
>incompetence Man..., its 2026 and just yesterday I did "Update and Shutdown" only for it to "Update and Restart" instead. It would be funny if it wasnt that sad..
- Zopieux 7mo ago
  Most updates need to reboot once or more, but the final one should have shutdown. Now, don't get me wrong, what the hell is so special about Windows that it needs to reboot for every little update operation?
  - mschuster91 7mo ago
    Can‘t replace files that are in-use and that includes running programs or loaded DLLs. Linux can, it keeps the inode and only actually deletes upon termination of last access.
  - rmunn 7mo ago
    It doesn't, I have installed many Windows updates that didn't require a reboot. Even ones I expected to need an update, like an update to a graphics driver. Screen just went blank, then came back a second later. AFAICT it's only updates to things that run at startup time that require a reboot, probably because NTFS doesn't allow you to write to a file that's currently opened (as opposed to nearly every Linux filesystem, which handles that just fine: the process that has the file opened continues to see the "old" file, while any that open it after the write will see the "new" file — but NTFS, probably due to internal architecture, can't handle that and so you have to reboot to change files that background services are using).
    - meinersbur 7mo ago
      It has nothing to so with NTFS, but all with the Win32 API. The Windows kernel supports this file model, proven by WSL1. There is a blog post somewhere (Old New Thing?) stating the engineers would like to e.g. allow deleting a file even if there is still a program with with a file handle to it, but are concerned deviation from current behavior would cause more problems than it solves. The reason that they want a reboot is that they do not want to support a system using two versions of the same library at the same time, let's say ntdll. So they would have to close any program using that library before programs that use the new version can be started. That is equivalent to a reboot. And I completely understand the reason. For a long time when Firefox would update on Linux, the browser windows still open were broken; it opened resources meant for the updated Firefox with the processes runnung the non-updated Firefox. The Chrome developers mentioned [2] that the "proper" solution would be to open every file at start and pass that file descriptor to the subprocesses so all of them are using the same version of the file. Needless to say, resource usage would go up. [2]: https://neugierig.org/software/chromium/notes/2011/08/zygote.html https://neugierig.org/software/chromium/notes/2011/08/zygote...
      - rmunn 7mo ago
        Thanks for the correction. Not having had to write anything against the Win32 API, I learned something from your comment. Appreciate the info.
      - 7mo ago
  - MaxikCZ 7mo ago
    Ive read this many times, so I tried this a few times, giving it the benefit of the doubt, only to find the PC on login screen the following morning every time.
- ash_091 7mo ago
  Ugh, I've had this happen over and over. I can't trust my laptop to actually shut down. I have to wait to see the light stay off for a couple seconds before I put it in my bag.

by chasil 7mo ago

RobotToaster 7mo ago

The fact that Microsoft are doing zero nostalgia marketing is baffling to me. Put a clippy skin on copilot and people would probably install it voluntarily.

MaxikCZ 7mo ago

>incompetence Man..., its 2026 and just yesterday I did "Update and Shutdown" only for it to "Update and Restart" instead. It would be funny if it wasnt that sad..

Zopieux 7mo ago
Most updates need to reboot once or more, but the final one should have shutdown. Now, don't get me wrong, what the hell is so special about Windows that it needs to reboot for every little update operation?
- mschuster91 7mo ago
  Can‘t replace files that are in-use and that includes running programs or loaded DLLs. Linux can, it keeps the inode and only actually deletes upon termination of last access.
- rmunn 7mo ago
  It doesn't, I have installed many Windows updates that didn't require a reboot. Even ones I expected to need an update, like an update to a graphics driver. Screen just went blank, then came back a second later. AFAICT it's only updates to things that run at startup time that require a reboot, probably because NTFS doesn't allow you to write to a file that's currently opened (as opposed to nearly every Linux filesystem, which handles that just fine: the process that has the file opened continues to see the "old" file, while any that open it after the write will see the "new" file — but NTFS, probably due to internal architecture, can't handle that and so you have to reboot to change files that background services are using).
  - meinersbur 7mo ago
    It has nothing to so with NTFS, but all with the Win32 API. The Windows kernel supports this file model, proven by WSL1. There is a blog post somewhere (Old New Thing?) stating the engineers would like to e.g. allow deleting a file even if there is still a program with with a file handle to it, but are concerned deviation from current behavior would cause more problems than it solves. The reason that they want a reboot is that they do not want to support a system using two versions of the same library at the same time, let's say ntdll. So they would have to close any program using that library before programs that use the new version can be started. That is equivalent to a reboot. And I completely understand the reason. For a long time when Firefox would update on Linux, the browser windows still open were broken; it opened resources meant for the updated Firefox with the processes runnung the non-updated Firefox. The Chrome developers mentioned [2] that the "proper" solution would be to open every file at start and pass that file descriptor to the subprocesses so all of them are using the same version of the file. Needless to say, resource usage would go up. [2]: https://neugierig.org/software/chromium/notes/2011/08/zygote.html https://neugierig.org/software/chromium/notes/2011/08/zygote...
    - rmunn 7mo ago
      Thanks for the correction. Not having had to write anything against the Win32 API, I learned something from your comment. Appreciate the info.
    - 7mo ago
- MaxikCZ 7mo ago
  Ive read this many times, so I tried this a few times, giving it the benefit of the doubt, only to find the PC on login screen the following morning every time.
ash_091 7mo ago
Ugh, I've had this happen over and over. I can't trust my laptop to actually shut down. I have to wait to see the light stay off for a couple seconds before I put it in my bag.