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Comment by kens | Hacker News Reader

I'm a tolerant person, but I switched from Windows to Mac because the forced Windows updates kept messing me up. One time I left a long simulation running overnight. In the morning, I was greeted by a computer that had automatically rebooted to install updates, killing my simulation. Another instance was my daughter's birthday party, where she wanted to show a movie. The computer decided to spend an hour doing updates instead. It seems like Windows has become an update engine that will sometimes also do computation for you.

My assumption is there's someone at Microsoft who gets a bonus as long as they keep presenting update graphs going up and to the right, and they don't care how much they mess up the user experience in the process. Microsoft should reassign that person.

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> The computer decided to spend an hour doing updates instead

All Linux/BSD systems I've used can update in minutes at the most (excluding the download time); I've long since wondered why Windows update is so much slower? Even binary diffs generally don't take that long to apply in my experience. So where is all the time spent?

Also why does it need to reboot? It is the "hard" file locking that's on Windows?

Reboot is definitely the file locking. One of the worst architectural choices that they made.

As for the time, I have no idea. A lot of it’s sitting there doing SFA looking at task manager.

My impression, as an enterprise user is that Windows updates require reboots less frequently than they used to.

I also note that Macs often require update reboots too, which suggests there is more to this.

Some Linux updates also require a reboot on some distributions. Less frequently than Windows, but still there.

> Some Linux updates also require a reboot on some distributions.

AFAIK the only time this is the case is an update of something that can only be reloaded to get the updated version by rebooting--the most common case being the kernel.

Some linux updates require a reboot for a kernel update to take effect; Many modern ones, if properly configured, can update the kernels without rebooting (e.g. Ubuntu, RedHat and Oracle all have that as a paid option for businesses, Ubuntu also free for personal or oss use).

But I've never had an issue where something wouldn't work between the end of an update and a reboot, where that does happen on Windows. Furthermore, it has happened to me that after a kernel upgrade (on a system that did require a reboot to make it take effect), I took a couple of weeks before reboot (running long simulations), in which case I was able to apply yet another kernel upgrade or two; but you only ever need one reboot to make the latest-and-greatest take effect.

On Windows, you accumulate reboots if you wait (which requires constantly rejecting the "shall I reboot now" prompts) so you may need many; and I've sometimes needed several reboots even though I didn't delay anything.

> can update the kernels without rebooting

The implementation is (IMO) really interesting from a programming perspective (https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/livepatch/livepatch.h...).

Live kernel patching is limited though: it can update most functions and some datastructures, but not all. This is great for bugfixes and security patches but can't deal with larger updates. If you're trying to keep on the latest version you need to reboot at some point.

Some distributions are switching to a more aggressive "reboot for any system update" model, with the system built on ostree or something of the sort. For instance, Ubuntu Core, Fedora Silverblue, or Endless OS. The update is downloaded and committed to disk (in a big, git-like repo for the latter two), but you need to boot into it. Your running system is untouched. This comes with the bonus that rollback is seamless: you choose an older commit from grub and it just works.

Of course, one key difference here is the system never tricks you into rebooting, and rebooting for an update takes just as long as rebooting any other time, so mostly (pending additional work, as usual :b) it's invisible.

I seem to recall Microsoft exploring similar to ostree with some Windows version somewhere, so I'd be curious to see how theirs behaves.

Windows 10 Pro user at work, mixed MacOS / Windows / Lubuntu at home.

I've been on my work Windows 10 PC for 60+hrs this week, and about the same each of the past four weeks, and five to six days out of seven the past couple years.

And never had it force-update.

You can bet the moment I took this computer home (I won't, but humour me) and tried to watch a movie it would force-update, crash, refuse to boot, and need a full reinstall.

Maybe your employer is running their own update server with their own update policies? If only at-home pro users could do that.

Well short of running your own home server and AD, you can join it to Azure AD and try Intune? Haven't used Intune to control patching myself yet.

Actually domain joined Windows machines tend to keep their state when they can't see their domain controller. You would probably find, depending on config, that updates stop all together.

Ah, I see. I’ll check.

you can get something like ksplice/kpatch for kernel reboots for security and other issues and not reboot https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ksplice

https://ksplice.oracle.com/

kpatch:

https://access.redhat.com/articles/2475321

Big updates are secretly reinstalls of windows, where everything is dropped back in. Big, slow hard drives make this take longer.

A complete reinstall of a modern Ubuntu on a spinning HDD takes less than 30 minutes in my experience (often less than 15).

Windows installs and reinstalls take hours more often than not -- just logging in for the first time on an up-to-date Win10 laptop recently took 10 minutes to "personalize" it for me ... and this was on an SSD. I used to have curiosity about how they made it so bad, but these days I've placed anything windows under a SEP field.

My last windows install was about 30 minutes from boot to actually on desktop (very frustratingly interactive though, blocking the last 10 minutes behind that personalizing dialog)

And then there's the updates

Not really, if you download a fresh installation media from Microsoft

What's "SFA" (sorry for not knowing)

In Australian lingo at least, from that context it means "Sweet F__k All". aka "not doing anything useful"

Now compare that to Linux where even the kernel can be updated without a reboot...

(Assuming you run a recent Ubuntu)

They do kexec ? (And no, ksplice/kpatch, if they are using that is not booting a new kernel.) I would be kinda worried about long term system state in that case...

I'm confused by your question. Kexec is a reboot, at least as currently implemented, and that comment does not claim that it's "booting a new kernel".

Huh? The one thing you generally can't update is the kernel since it's the foundation of every other process. I haven't used ubuntu in several years, have things changed drastically?

Only if you register for Canonical Livepatch Service. Standard Ubuntu still requires reboot.

There were three large patches that were integrated into the Linux kernel in version 4.0 (2014) that make it so that you can live patch the kernel easily. [0][1][2]

(Before these arrived there were already some tool's for it, for some distros. But now everyone should be able to, unless the distro intentionally cripples the ability).

[0] https://lwn.net/Articles/619390/

[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/622936/

[2] https://lwn.net/Articles/634649/

Only partially: you can apply some bugfix and securit patches, but straight upgrades to a new kernel version still requires a reboot.

In-place OS updates can be racy. Some updates require rebooting because they involve kernel changes that can't be applied to a running kernel. Then there's the WIN32 mandatory file locks issues, which prevent updates / replacement of files that apps are using.

But if Windows had anything like ZFS, they could apply updates on a fork of a dataset and then reboot very quickly into that dataset. That is the right way to do updates in general, at the price of always having to reboot, but you can do a mix of in-place updates when those don't require reboots and any races are safe, and ZFS-style updates otherwise.

> Then there's the WIN32 mandatory file locks issues, which prevent updates / replacement of files that apps are using.

I should point out that this is not actually a blocker, if somebody at windows actually gave a fuck they could abuse winsxs to do blue/green symlinks to get around the file lock issue. Meaning the update could happen in the background and take effect next boot without anything needing to happen at boot time. Most could be done by just restarting the proper system service.

Its just microsoft has decided not to give a fuck. Rather then work on why people want to deferrer and delay updates, they have decided... well, whats that meme? "no its the kids who are wrong".

Even in the Win9x days, you could always rename a binary that was in use and copy the new one in its place, at which point newly spawned processes will use the new one while old processes continue to be unaffected.

Quite frankly I find the Linux/Unix-style behaviour of being able to delete/overwrite an in-use file a bit disconcerting, but that might just be because I'm more used to the Windows way.

> So where is all the time spent?

I had the same question, so I decided to look under the covers to see what the update process actually involves. I experienced true horror, ran away screaming, and never looked back.

There are panthers in there, lurking in the shadows.

Tell me more.

> All Linux/BSD systems I've used can update in minutes at the most

But they naively schedule those minutes immediately after I've logged in, so the CPU and network is pegged and the disk thrashed while I'm sitting there cursing.

If I've logged in, it's to do a task. Not to wait for unattended-upgrades.py to finish its task before graciously handing the computer back to me.

Even waiting 10 minutes after login before checking for updates would be more tolerable.

Which distros have that problem? I generally stick to arch or centos, neither of which has tried to kneecap me at login time. Of course, both are fairly manual for updates unless you set up cron jobs to schedule them for you.

I use Ubuntu, and I've never had that problem. It usually checks for updates at boot, but doesn't actually download them until you manually approve it.

Laptop computers and hard disks are a big source of frustration. Either one is a hassle but combined they become a mess.

With desktops, I can tell people that they are supposed to leave their computers on 24/7 but most normal people will use their laptop and shut the lid when done. That’s what they do with phones and iPads and that’s what they expect from their laptops.

That being said, I sincerely detest automatic reboots. It doesn’t affect me anymore because I have an ssd now but an operating system that reboots the computer without explicit approval from the user is trash. There is no excuse for this kind of nonsense.

I like Mozilla Firefox’s approach on my fedora machine. After I dnf update, Firefox refuses to open any more tabs until I close and open Firefox again. However, existing tabs continue working just fine and I can continue indefinitely before I close and open Firefox again. This is actual trust in computing. Trust your users to know best.

I'm currently using Kubuntu, and sometimes the jobs that run at bootup hang the login screen and even prevent the TTY gettys (i.e. ctrl-alt-f2) from starting at all. In those cases I alt-sysrq-u and reset. Haven't determined whether it's fstrim, unattended-upgrades, a search indexer, or something else, because alt-sysrq-t is disabled in Ubuntu kernels and I can't start a task manager if I can't log in.

It's pretty frustrating, but it's still slightly better than Windows.

Mac isn't all that much better with the Remind Me Later nag you can't fully dismiss.

They've been marching steadily towards forced updates, just they're being obnoxious enough first that people will thank them for cutting the UI noise.

Mac won't literally forcibly reboot your machine though if you aren't sitting there to click "no." You can also use `softwareupdate --ignore` on Mac to shut off the notification. I'm not aware of anything equivalent on Windows.

Looks like it's removed as of 10.15.5

Yeah, ignore is removed going forward. The forced reboots from Windows are absolutely obnoxious, though, no argument.

>You can also use `softwareupdate --ignore` on Mac to shut off the notification. I'm not aware of anything equivalent on Windows.

the ability to cancel or ignore updates on a windows machine is relegated to a downloaded tool on the Microsoft site[0].

[0]: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4026726/windows-10-...

The Microsoft ignore updates is only temporary though isn't it?

softwareupdate --ignore is now deprecated, and will via security patches even be patched out of older versions of MacOS, in what is an enormous "fuck you" to users.

They have this other way to force updates, by removing support for the OS you are running every few years.

You can't have both no updates and avoid random exploits that are randomly discovered with time. Maybe experienced users know what's going on, but an average user would mindlessly click ignore until the machine is owned by ransomware.

> an average user would mindlessly click ignore until the machine is owned by ransomware.

It's the user's machine to ruin. Tech companies need to stop saving users from themselves when said users have actual informed opinions.

> It's the user's machine to ruin.

But it's Microsoft's ass that gets dragged through the mud for decades when unpatched Windows machines cause problems for others.

They learned their lesson. Users can't be trusted.

At least now you ARE prompted to reboot if you have used the machine at all in the past 3 days or something. And if you haven't, it will still wait a week.

No one in this thread seems to be up to date on that. Everyone is complaining about the Windows 10 of 3-5 years ago, completely unaware that things have changed a lot.

So yeah I see why Microsoft does what it does, sometimes. The internet won't cut them any slack no matter what happens, so Microsoft do what's best for the user, whether they like it or not. And, again, they don't just surprise reboot anymore if you're on a recent release.

> But it's Microsoft's ass

This is exactly why I don't run Microsoft software, even after their rabid tendencies mellowed a bit - providing software the user wants is not their priority.

But neither commercial consumer platform is producing an OS that respects their users - it is one-size-fits-all, you must be an idiot-ware. I don't serve my operating system, it's the other way around. So I'm done with both of them.

> when unpatched Windows machines cause problems for others

Charitably that's only half of the story. Their security model was ... not great in the past.

If as you claim their security PR problems were all due to poor decisions by users then where are all the people slamming Apple for all the vulnerable systems caused by postponement of updates? What about Ubuntu, Fedora, etc?

But it's Microsoft's ass that gets dragged through the mud for decades when unpatched Windows machines cause problems for others.

I'm not sure that's entirely fair. But in any case, Microsoft's reputation is certainly being damaged by the long series of failures caused by bad updates to Windows 10.

No one in this thread seems to be up to date on that. Everyone is complaining about the Windows 10 of 3-5 years ago, completely unaware that things have changed a lot.

The important facts haven't really changed. There might be some small quantitative improvements, but qualitative changes are required to fix this problem, and Microsoft is still stubbornly refusing to make them because they don't fit the business model under Nadella's leadership.

Sadly, until there are viable alternatives so a large proportion of Windows users can jump ship, they'll probably continue to get away with it too. The only other potential way out I can see is if governments step in and start regulating because the damage is becoming sufficiently painful that voters/businesses are starting to send a significant number of complaints. I'm not sure we're there yet, even though plenty of people have been stung by a bad update at least once already.

>No one in this thread seems to be up to date on that. Everyone is complaining about the Windows 10 of 3-5 years ago, completely unaware that things have changed a lot.

Because when you have wide ranging issues like that it takes a lot of time for people's opinion to change. All it takes is for a user to be burned once by this system and they might end up remembering and anticipating these issues for decades. MS reaps what they sowed.

>so Microsoft do what's best for the user, whether they like it or not.

And over the years this builds up an anti-MS/Windows sentiment that will be very difficult to get rid of.

I tried running a weaker machine on Windows for my parents. They ended up not using the computer at all, because every time they started the machine it would do something update related. Even just the things in the background made the computer unusable. There aren't prompts for things like that. They would rather go and pay their bills in person than use the computer because of the updates. I didn't know it was that bad, but actually trying to use it myself I understood.

That is simply not true. My up-to-date Windows 10 machines frequently reboot without me telling them to do so. I'll be working on some project, leave the project windows open and put the computer to sleep over night, only to find the computer rebooted next morning. Presumably the computer woke up in the middle of the night, showed the update prompt to the empty room, and since nobody intervened, killed my programs and rebooted.

Then you've done something somehow, or I have, because none of my 5 Windows machines have rebooted without a week's notice in about three years.

If it helps, you can use "powercfg /lastwake" at a command prompt to find out why the computer last woke from sleep. With that info you should be able to put an end to those unrequested wakes.

You have probably adjusted something, though Microsoft are very good at undoing anything you do to disable automatic updates. The update system by default wakes the PC up in the middle of the night to reboot it. In my experience it more reliably wakes the PC up than rebooting it, so what happens is you just have a PC which turns on in the middle of the night and sits there idling, which is extremely irritating if you happen to sleep in the same room, and accomplishes nothing.

But it doesn't force restart your computer, right?

Interesting. I never experienced something like this on my desktop. Actually I always wondered why people are bothered by windows 10 updates at all, because for me it was maximail a bit disturbing.

My xps notebook with windows 10 OTOH, well, it's actually close to a nightmare. I bought it late 2019 and had multiple on occasions the machine decided to WAKE UP from sleep a hour after midnight and running the update Procedere without shutting down. If it was in the sleeve I was greeted by a very very hot notebook at the morning with almost no battery left.

It took a while to turn this of.

I've had a similar nightmare on a laptop. Every once in a while it would wake up randomly to do a Windows Update. But since the lid is closed, the laptop would overheat and shutdown in the middle of the update. When I came to use it it would waste an hour or two removing the broken update. After a couple such incidents I just installed Debian instead.

This is even worse.

For the record; I tried lots of stuff but I think this german post was the solution: https://www.computerbase.de/forum/threads/universal-orchestr...

Reminds me of my PS4. I only played it a couples times a month, but every time I turned it on it had 30 minutes' worth of upgrades waiting. I sold my PS4 because I was tired of the updates.

In the same vein, forced updates is why I refuse to allow Snap on any of my systems and opt for Flatpak instead.

But you can pay Sony $60 a year for the privilege of getting your PS4 to update everything in the background on its own! Clearly the free market provides the best player experience.

That's the reason I don't buy consoles anymore, the consoles had a simple pitch going for them, sit down and play, no waiting, no fiddling. That used to be true, except nowadays, you have to wait for endless updates every time you switch on the console.

Xbox One is even worse. If you go to long without playing you have to both update, and sign back in to a microsoft account.

Mac OS X has been my daily driver for almost 1.5 decades and I almost got my parents a Mac since they had an ancient laptop and were sorely in need of an upgrade. Instead, I got them a shiny laptop from the Microsoft Store thinking that would minimize the kinds of problems I’ve encountered with terribly cheap Windows machines over the years (icky stuff installed, bad drivers, bad build quality, etc). In recent months my parents have experienced unsettling behavior which I assume is related to Windows updates: seeing it update and then turn to a black screen forever, without even being able to turn it off and back on (and then returning the next morning and it magically comes back on). Of course I had to buy them a new machine right before the pandemic, so the Microsoft Store is closed and I can’t get someone to see if there’s any other problem with it. I know iOS is defaulting to updating people without them knowing too - I’m not a fan, but maybe I’m not the target demographic. Still, they should make sure it’s more robust if they’re going to force it on people without warning.

iOS at least defaults to updating in the middle of the night when the device is plugged in and locked. It also gives you a warning hours before it happens.

If you're able to walk them through it, automatic updates can be disabled.

if I may suggest a refactoring : "15 years" is 30% less characters than "1.5 decades" and it's less surprising too

That doesn’t sound good. We had similar black screen behavior. It turns out that disabling hibernation solved the problem.

Yeah, I'll give that a whirl. And after posting my comment, I discovered that Microsoft is closing all their stores, so no real-life meetings with Microsoft's version of an Apple Genius will be possible anymore...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23651672

Hmm, I have both but I honestly find the Mac more annoying. For people who shut down their computer at night, the Windows updates work quite well - they download quietly in the background and apply quickly when you shut down and start up. I haven’t had a Windows machine restart at an irritating time for years. Every Mac update I’ve done, on the other hand, has taken 30-60 minutes of staring at a screen with a progress bar while the fans spin up to maximum. And weeks of nagging EVERY DAY before I finally give in and update.

sounds like apples to oranges. you shut down your windows computer at night, but not your mac - i don't get it?

mac updates do take a while, but unless i'm misremembering, they're less frequent. and some windows updates take absolutely ages, too. the difference for me is that windows update keeps breaking stuff, like bluetooth drivers -.-

Macs seem to discourage shutting down, compared to windows. I’ve always been a windows user and I literally couldn’t figure out HOW to shut down the Mac without asking someone. No power button, nothing came up in the search tool thingie for ‘shut down’, I didn’t realise the Apple logo was clickable... maybe I’m just a bit thick :) Anyway, my point is, the UI discourages you from regularly giving the computer a good time to install updates.

You not knowing that the Mac equivalent of the start button has a shutdown option is the “UI discouraging?”

How does the Windows UI encourage shutdowns?

I only shut down my windows and mac machines. Windows is at least weekly, mac is about 2-3 times per month.

Because the windows shutdown option is in the start menu, which you see constantly. The Mac shut down option is in a menu which I almost never click. To me, that indicates the designers have different ideas about how often users want to shutdown/restart. Apparently lots of people disagree though since I got downvoted a lot (which I don’t think is what downvote is for, but whatever...)

That feature screws me all the time. I'll load windows to play a game and try to reboot back into linux, and the update kicks off. I always have to force shutdown and just let it update the next time I start it to play a game.

Windows kicked off an update in the middle of a friend's funeral where there was a slideshow running.

Its part of the windows as a service transition. In a commercial setting it’s even worse — I have had to keep machines vulnerable because update bundles contain code that breaks stuff and you cannot break them out.

The other fun thing is that if you run into a complex problem, there’s no scenario where it will get fixed for you. For some products, there is literally a two week window before they freeze changes.

There is no escape — this is the new way. Apple is even worse and more unpredictable.

I have had to keep machines vulnerable because update bundles contain code that breaks stuff and you cannot break them out.

Vulnerable to what, exactly? That is also the other part of the problem with these "security updates" --- if you look at the details (when they are provided, which seems to be diminishing too) the vast majority of them are local privilege escalations that assume the attacker can run arbitrary code on the machine; IMHO if an attacker can do that, you already have a much bigger problem to worry about!

My assumption is that Windows users are notoriously bad at applying updates, either because they are not aware of them or believe that they know better than Microsoft.

While I do prefer the update mechanism under my choice of Linux distributions, which allows me to initiate an update then cancel it if it looks like it will affect software currently in use, it is not suitable for most people.

> My assumption is that Windows users are notoriously bad at applying updates, either because they are not aware of them or believe that they know better than Microsoft.

That's a rather broad brush you got there.

Windows users probably gained the reputation for being update-adverse when Windows decided it owned the computer, not the user (me) who paid for the electricity that the computer definitely needs.

That in and of itself wouldn't be a thing except windows updates on multiple occasions have broken stuff and restarted computers on people in the middle of their work.

How dare MS add their own timer to MY computer. It's their software, but after Windows 8.1 (the last OS that actually passably pretends to obey me), I'm done and going to Linux. Mint or Fedora. Xfce. I may not drink much of the FOSS first cool aid, but its time.

Windows 10 (non LTSC) hates me, and the feeling is mutual.

> Windows users probably gained the reputation for being update-adverse when Windows decided it owned the computer

It is also possible to argue that Microsoft became more aggressive with updates because people were not updating their systems.

I do not agree with many of the decisions that Microsoft made with Windows updates. For example: I am of the opinion that they should have made security updates mandatory and let people decide whether they will accept feature updates. Yes, there would still be issues with that model but at least they can legitimize it. They can legitimize it since we live in a networked world that has to be treated as hostile.

As for your transition to Linux, I would highly suggest finding reasons to embrace Linux rather than treating it as a means for ditching Windows. One of those reasons includes the FLOSS "kool-aid" since the less restrictive licensing model has many benefits that trickle down to the end user. Having positive reasons for using Linux will also make it easier to stick with it when you do come across aspects that you do not like, because you will come across things that you do not like.

And please stop bad mouthing Windows. Quite frankly, a lot of Linux user look like idiots since they spout outdated information. Just as Linux has improved over time, Windows has done the same. Within a few months, there is a solid possibility that critiques of the platform will become irrelevant. Within a few years, it is virtually certain that the critiques will be irrelevant.

>Within a few years, it is virtually certain that the critiques will be irrelevant.

Really? So you're saying Driver Signature Enforcement will suddenly disappear I can run unblessed by Microsoft drivers again so I can maintain the capability to keep my out-of-support hardware configurations running?

Oh wait, that's not going away... That fix wasn't even really for me. That was so the media distribution industry could sleep well at night, and who cares if it makes a bunch of User's hardware unsupportable?

Windows will stop running reams of telemetry, and stop pushing all their Cloud offerings on my users so that they actually know where their things are? They'll stop with their user hostile UXconfiguration so I can just present them an interface that mostly workswithout having to rejigger things after every update?

Windows will stop taking a sledge hammer to my EFI partition every damn time I let it update, resetting itself as the primary boot option until I go in and reset things manually?

It is so difficult nowadays for me to get across to kids just how different computing is now and how even if you do have more "stable" or "resilient" systems, how much more difficult it is to actually be able to figure out what is going on beneath the hood because of the encroachment into the computing industry of every special interest industry or some programmer looking to obfuscate their shitty software because those sniveling lusers should be happy they're getting a machine that does anything at all!

It's no surprise at all to me that encouraging computational literacy is such a challenge, because the entire industry has gotten so bewitched by capitalization and innovation (not of computing itself but) of applying computers to enable previously practically infeasible business models that I've grown to hate the behemoth the tech industry has become.

Half the time anymore, I can't even justify to myself going to the latest, greatest, computer hardware anymore, or checking out that new game, because every damn time I look into it, the majority of the damn thing isn't about doing anything better for the user, but providing some hook through which to monetize the user.

Sorry, but I can't take these sorts of "it's not that bad. " posts seriously. Excessive compute has largely just enabled the vices of those who build things in the first place. I see programs that fulfill the same end user use cases as programs we had 20+ years ago, less efficiently, with greater bloat, more 3rd party info leaks, superfluousnetwork connectivity, anti-user nannies/safe-guards which are less about the user's safety than aboutenabling someone else to extract rent.

Frankly, the same thing goes for most tech companies nowadays. Even some of the notable FOSS ones, who insteadofrentseeking in the traditional sense, fight over "developer mindshare".

Might have overshot my intended message, but God bless, it needed to be said.

Get off my LAN, and never darken my ports with your packets ever again!

My assumption is that Windows users are notoriously bad at applying updates, either because they are not aware of them or believe that they know better than Microsoft.

But plenty of us do know better than Microsoft. For example, I'm typing this on a Windows PC with no telemetry and no forced updates. I'm perfectly OK with determining that I don't need those privacy, security and reliability risks without any help from Microsoft.

How about a learned behavior? Windows update has burned with enough times with unusable system that I am now trained to not trust it. "up"date isn't the word I'd use for it. And before you say that doesn't happen anymore, Microsoft has been saying this and repeating it for 2+ decades.

Its not the users that are bad at updating. It is Microsoft.

I've never had an issue with forced updates with Windows 10. Might be because I use the Enterprise edition?

If you want to get it, I recommend the Microsoft Action Pack - you get a lot stuff for the money, including multiple Windows 10 licenses, 5 O365 licenses, Visual Studio subscriptions, Azure credits... It's amazing value really, but seems to be relatively unknown.

Nah, never had issues on Pro too (upgraded from win7)

Indeed. I'm honestly surprised to read of such poor experiences here because I've honestly found that Windows 10 has given me a lot less grief than macOS has recently.

Oh thanks. Do you have to signup as a Microsoft partner in order to get the action pack?

I've had it for something like 5 years now, but I think the only qualifier was joining the Microsoft Partner Network (MPN), which is free, but I think you need to have a business, which I'd assume many on HN do (even a sole trader is OK, I think).

I've never had an issue with forced updates with Windows 10. Might be because I use the Enterprise edition?

For many practical purposes, the higher Windows 10 tiers such as Enterprise and Education are a different product to the lower ones such as Home and Pro.

Microsoft isn't stupid and knows that professional sysadmins at large organisations would never surrender control of their corporate networks and the devices on them to an external party, so Microsoft doesn't try to push much-criticised aspects of Windows 10 such as mandatory telemetry and upgrades in that market.

If you want to get it, I recommend the Microsoft Action Pack

Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be any legal method to acquire Windows 10 Enterprise without signing up for all the other enterprise junk that no small business wants to deal with. The Pro edition of Windows used to cater to the small business and power user market, yet bizarrely in Windows 10 that edition seems to have been heavily downgraded and is now little better than Home in the negative aspects we're talking about here.

>> If you want to get it, I recommend the Microsoft Action Pack

> Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be any legal method to acquire Windows 10 Enterprise without signing up for all the other enterprise junk that no small business wants to deal with

Not sure if there is a misunderstanding here, but you're replying directly to my comment that explains how you can get the Enterprise edition without a volume licensing deal or any other "enterprise junk".

Searching for "Microsoft Action Pack" took me to this page:

https://partner.microsoft.com/en-GB/membership/action-pack

That is immediately full of buzzword bull about partners and subscriptions, which is exactly the sort of enterprise junk I was referring to before. Notably missing however is any straightforward way to buy a legitimate copy of Windows 10 Enterprise, or anything resembling instructions for doing so or pricing information.

If you have indeed found a legitimate way to just buy a plain copy of Windows 10 Enterprise for use on a business PC without further strings attached, unfortunately I wasn't able to find it from the information in your previous comment.

I found this page, which is fairly clear:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/partner-center/mpn-get-acti...

Yes, they make it harder than it needs to be, but it's not particularly difficult either. And you're not just buying Windows 10 Enterprise, which is why there is no "Buy Windows 10 Enterprise now!" button - it's a subscription to a veritable trove of software and Azure credits.

1. Sign up to join the Microsoft Partner Network 2. Buy the Action Pack

Fair enough. But what we'd be looking for is essentially a "Buy Windows 10 Enterprise now!" button. We have no interest in commercial partnering arrangements with accompanying legal shenanigans. We don't want a subscription-based anything. We don't need to tie in a load of other software and services that we neither use nor care about.

Since Windows 10 Pro isn't really a Pro edition in the historical sense, we're just looking for a suitable replacement in the Windows 10 generation. That would have to be Enterprise as things stand, because no edition below that would currently be acceptable in terms of having full control of our own systems. But Microsoft doesn't want to sell us anything close to a like-for-like replacement to the Pro editions we've used for many years with previous Windows versions, so we won't use Windows 10 as our main desktop OS.

> We have no interest in commercial partnering arrangements with accompanying legal shenanigans

There are none, you're looking too hard for road blocks! All that stuff only comes into play if you become a "real" Microsoft partner by paying them lots of money and attaining one of the competency tiers; for the Action Pack, you just give them $400/y (or whatever it is, I don't recall precisely).

Most of the points you mentioned there were not immediately obvious to me from reading either of the pages we cited above, so I'll have to take your word that there is something relevant available even if I can't readily identify it. But to be frank, if it would cost that much just to get a useful Windows 10 licence, or even a handful of them, it's hardly going to be attractive compared to the other options anyway, even if there really are no other shenanigans.

I do appreciate your time writing these comments, but unfortunately what I'm seeing so far doesn't really look any more promising than anything I've come across in any previous discussions on this subject. If Microsoft ever decides to offer a simple licence at a reasonable price for a fully controlled edition of Windows 10, and if we haven't already got everything we need from the combination of six other platforms we currently use at my businesses anyway, maybe we'll take a look. For now, it seems their business model doesn't include having businesses like us as customers, and we're certainly not going to go out of our way to work around that and give them money anyway. After all, why on earth would we?

Fair point, while the Action Pack is amazing value, it's only worth it if you're on a Microsoft stack - it wouldn't be worth it only to get a single Windows 10 Enterprise license (I think you actually get 5 licenses, as well as server edition licenses, SQL Server licenses, Visual Studio subscriptions, 5 O365 subscriptions, Azure credits and more).

Mac is similar too. I get tired of having to upgrade my OS (losing features such as 32 bit support or having to upgrade to use new hardware) simply to stay secure.

The Mac won’t auto reboot your system to install that update. It just nags you now and then like it should.

Try this: When you see that updates are available, just install them instead of putting it off. It takes 10 minutes at most. Following that philosophy, I have never had an update interrupt me at a critical moment. Meanwhile my update-averse colleagues are constantly dodging the prompts and complaining about update interruptions.

On my games machine, yup. Generally works a treat. On the Win 7 era laptop used as a web browser by parents though? The same updates take several hours (slow spinning rust). So that machine is likely being replaced by a Chromebook in the near future, as a Windows replacement is looking at least double the cost for enough hardware to avoid the update problems.

Why not put in an SSD? That would be cheaper than a Chromebook

Your assumption is not correct. The secret answer is that you (and all home customers) are simply beta testers for enterprise customers.

Worked in enterprise, windows computers there only update on the week end or when the administrator decides to force an update overnight (they send a notification firmwide that all computers will be rebooted).

Look at the release channels. The SAC for Windows and monthly channel for MS365 are used to test for the real customers which are enterprise (LTS) users.

Looking at the way MS365 does it for different SKUs makes it obvious. Less money means more frequent updates.

Any time I've had that happen, I've ignored prompts to install updates on my schedule, or even to schedule to update to happen some time in the next week. Every time I tell it to schedule the update, it does it when I tell it to.

Agreed. Windows needs to have APIs, and apps that can save state must use them, to give apps a chance to save state. E.g., hibernate running VMs, finish syncing docs to drives, save simulation state (as in your case), etc.

Making every app that retains any state automatically save it sounds good but seems harder to implement than just don't reboot without asking.

Many apps already have this. Your browser can restore windows and tabs on restart. Your $EDITORs save work in progress and let you restore on restart (well, VIM does). VMs can get paused and saved. These are by far the most important apps to have restored. Sure, I'd like my tmux instances and shells and stuff restored too, but I script all that setup anyways, so I'm good there. So, really, it's just a matter of integration.

This still compares unfavorably to suspend and hibernate and worrying about state once every several months.

Isn’t there a maintenance window that can be configured, I don’t know what the default one is sounds like something to tweak. I’m not saying all is well, i would set it and move on with my life YMMV

Did the simulation require internet access?

What are the tactics Microsoft uses to deal with computers that are offline? Can those tactics be circumvented?

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