Windows 10 is getting an easier way to update and install drivers
windowslatest.com
windowslatest.com
If I remember correctly, all the way up to windows 8.1, you could choose which updates to install. It was only with windows 10 that they removed the ability to select updates. It's ironic how they're touting this as a new feature, when really it's fixing a regression.
The prevalence of Windows means that they can't let individuals make too many choices because bad outcomes reflect on Microsoft and not those users or admins who contributed to the problem. There is pressure from governments and companies for protection from infrastructure threats which drives some of this thinking. This is not limited to Microsoft, even Firefox introduced updater changes which limits how users can opt-out of automatic updates.
There was likely an assumption that restart-less upgrades would become a reality more quickly than they have, so the responsible teams went with a simplified update mechanism to protect the ecosystem. That backfired in a range of other ways, but at least the ecosystem is relatively safe.
There is a reason for that. Reason not being just the choice itself, but mostly that automated updates tend to range from inconvenient, through bloating up the machine, to outright dangerous to your data and software.
The reason to install updates is security. The reason to not install them is all the other things that get included. Because of that, I wish it was a standard to run security updates separately from feature updates, and keep the second type fully optional. Yes, it's more work for the developers, but it's better for the users (and our industry is going too far with preferring its own convenience over end-user value).
This exists for Windows 10. It's called Windows 10 Enterprise Long Term Support Channel. It gets feature updates every 2-3 years but each release comes with a minimum of 10 years of security support.
Leave it to Microsoft to make stability as an Enterprise fearure.
(Requires logging in with a password/profile it doesn’t remember between updates and disabling pi hole for some stupid reason)
That said, Windows 10 driver handling already handles the basic drivers out of the box (at least for me)
Generally though, these manufacturers have their own driver / bios update software that 1.) creates additional background / tray apps 2.) autostarts 3.) offers implicitly to download extra "helpful", "optional" software
Examples of software where all three happens: Fujitsu ScanSnap, Gigabyte Aorus Motherboard, Lenovo Advantage
So now there's a passive, consistent performance loss on the system, a tray icon hogging up space, "helpful" notifications, and unsolicited popups not offering driver updates, but to download additional software (box is already checked)
One nice thing about Linux/BSD desktops is even when Nvidia did proprietary stuff, the most you'd see back in the day is an Nvidia logo when starting X (editing xorg.conf could disable it)
If you want notifications for new driver updates you don't need to login. You would go to Nvidia.com/drivers when you see the notification.
It's not quite as you described, but it is total horseradish.
You'd think a 300-400MB driver could update itself without a login.
Some of that bloat has features that one does actually need for tweaking
Ubuntu apparently knew all the drivers I needed, fetched them from beyond the great ether, and all was in harmony.
Why is this so easy for Canonical, but not Microsoft?
It's really weird to not know who is at fault here, if it's nvidia, microsoft or blizzard. There are no good way (other than disabling updates) to prevent windows update from overwriting drivers.
I wish microsoft would do something about this. Can't even remember if I submitted some feedback. Not to mention this computer is crazy slow since the upgrade from win8 to win10. I know the usual "get a SSD", but that computer was NOT THAT SLOW before the upgrade. Anyway this computer is a all-in-one, which has weird hardware. But still, it's a i7, with 6GB of ram. It's hard to believe it takes so long to open the start menu or just a folder.
Oh yeah, other thing: another friend bought an used laptop which had some insider preview enabled. 3 weeks ago her microphone just stopped working. Apparently you cannot remove an insider win10 build WITHOUT REINSTALLING. I was not able to fix it. I'm not even a maintenance guy.
Well, yeah. If a beta takes a wrong direction in the design of a new on-disk data structure, do you really expect them to write a reverse-migration that turns it back into the old format? That's a lot of work for a tiny point-release on branch of development they're not even sure they're going to make public. No commercial OS supports this.
I wish they'd ease up with signing core system files with short-lived certs either; I once had to reinstall my PC after not booting into Windows for ~3 months - when I tried to start Windows after that break, I discovered some core DLLs had expired certificates, preventing the system from booting.
You can go to the previous install you had quite painlessly. It's in 'recovery options'. You don't need to set a restore point, it just works.
... and a modern display server is still not used by default on Linux.
nVidia used to ship third party Mac drivers for their newer cards, but they decided to stop maintaining them a couple years ago, possibly because Apple said they wouldn't sign them them†, depending on how you interpret vague PR statements. Still, the third party drivers work on slightly older OS's—I'm currently typing this from a macOS High Sierra machine that has a GTX 1080 Ti.
† I want to note that driver signing isn't some draconian Apple thing, 64 bit versions of Windows also require signatures. You can install unsigned drivers on macOS by partially disabling SIP, but presumably nVidia didn't want to ship drivers that would require that.
The only thing that works is Metal, on purpose.
I know the GTX 1080 works on High Sierra, but that OS is at (or near) the end of its supported life.
Microsoft manages the driver signing process but doesn’t play these games. If nVidia wants to write and maintain drivers for macOS, why get in their way?
> Apple fully controls drivers for Mac OS. But if Apple allows, our engineers are ready and eager to help Apple deliver great drivers for Mac OS 10.14.
A lot of people have decided to interpret this as "Apple is refusing to sign nVidia drivers", but I'm not ready to jump to that conclusion without more explicit details.
For example, nVidia has continued to release drivers compatible with High Sierra security updates (necessary because nVidia driver coded their drivers such that they'll refuse to launch on non-whitelisted build numbers). Apple has not suddenly refused to sign those drivers.
My personal theory: in Mojave, all desktop compositing goes through Metal, so nVidia would have needed to a major rewrite of their drivers. Given how few Mac users install third party graphics cards, this isn't worthwhile for nVidia. nVidia wants Apple to implement some type of legacy shim in macOS that drivers can plug into, and Apple characteristically said no.
That, to me, makes more sense than Apple suddenly deciding not to sign any drivers which are compatible with 10.14+.
Not only that, the cost of implementing a Metal frontend is trivial for NVIDIA.
It took about half way through to realize they just meant a UI change... kind of surprised they bothered with an announcement.
I'm pretty sure that continues to work as of at least win7 where one can go into the device manager and click hardware without drivers and install/activate most things without rebooting. Or upgrade/switch drivers for a piece of hardware. Its only if windows fails to stop the device does it request a system reboot. Probably the biggest problem, are the stupid little monitoring utilities that some vendors provide that open the device and never respond to device state change requests.
Still happens though. Thought they maybe had a clever way to make it invisible to more legacy software that forces reboots, or to make it so windows update never required one, or something similar new. That would be pretty amazing to me and worth an announcement. UI change, less so.
PS I also booted Ubuntu LTS Live CD and while it worked, hardware support was not very nice. Display FPS was set to 60 instead of 144 and after 5 minutes it turned display off and I couldn't turn it on. I guess, with enough tinkering those problems could be solved.
For most people, drivers are likely something they never deal with.
I guess this might be "enough" for people buying some of the most popular PCs (e.g. Dell), but it's certainly not going to be for everyone.
But then, for most things I always install recent'ish drivers from the manufacturer myself, which I guess would disable this feature for at least those things.
https://filestore.community.support.microsoft.com/api/images...
"Be kind. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine."
And it's not the same product any more than XP and Vista are the same product. A free upgrade is still an upgrade.