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Comment by ssheth | Hacker News Reader

There's a free tool called Windows Update MiniTool that works very well for disabling auto-updates and then allowing you to update manually every so often. That is what we install on our CNC machinery that have a Windows 10 backend.

https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/windows_update_mini...

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> free tool

I'd rather describe this as a mail-in-rebate for the costs of running Windows 10.

We sort of implicitly know there is this need to make the Windows lifestyle more sane, and can rely on tools like these existing.

But the time it takes to research this, track down the best binary for the job (examining the source code is not always easy), makes me conclude that there's a real hidden cost to being a Windows user.

It's not so hidden. It honestly astounds me that users are willing to put up with this bullshit.

The most impressive thing about Microsoft as a company is the way it single-handedly lowered user expectations to the point where ads, security issues, and critical time-wasting failures are somehow considered an acceptable price of entry, and not evidence of an unacceptably shoddy, incompetent, and user-hostile product culture.

Well, I came here to comment, but you already succinctly summed up my thoughts. Thanks for that!

People who run Windows aren’t the users - they’re the product, either with Microsoft selling their eyes with advertisements, harvesting their usage data through telemetry for a profit, using their numbers to push paid development software, or using their ubiquity to be the basis for computer literacy materials for public schools paid for by taxpayer.

I think the user vs. product dichotomy is not right in this case. Microsoft really does make its money on products and support. You can see this on their public filings.

The relevant dichotomy is more like: people who run Windows aren't the buyers. One-off personal licenses for home PCs are more than a rounding error but are certainly not what made Microsoft what it is.

Governments and F500 companies buy Windows and Office for X00,000 machines for X0 years of support at a time. Enterprise procurement teams are the actual buyers whose opinions matter to product managers.

> harvesting their usage data through telemetry for a profit

Does MS sell their telemetry data?

Why not use Windows Server instead?

Check the price tag.

You can run Server without product activation. I do it in a VM and think Server is well behaved.

nip180 wrote above:

> I paid $200 for a Windows 10 pro license because I needed to run a Windows application in a virtual machine.

I think if someone is willing to cheat on the licensing cost 4hey might just as well go with a pirated XP?

Please dont disable auto-updates. Instead configure your Windows machine to schedule them. Look your notifications. Treat it as a Car, not as a Toy.

I used to say the same, but my perception - and I know it's not reality, but every day with it feels like this:

* I log in.

* I start setting things up so I can start work.

* I'm notified about critical updates. There will be a forced reboot soon...

* I'm watching out in case something pops up while I'm typing and whatever key I was about to press causes the 'reboot' question to be answered - and I wait several minutes and lose flow entirely.

* I log in.

* I start setting things up again as they were so I can start work again.

* There are more critical updates...

Turning off auto-update is not an option, because there are so many security holes and I don't want to end up a victim. I also don't like having to fight to try and keep the OS from doing something it will push against, so trying to creep around letting it do updates when I'm not busy and reboots when I want it to but not asking me - waiting to be told - it's hard work and stressful.

Windows is an amazing piece of tech and gets better all the time, but I find myself much more able to stay in the 'flow' and avoid stress in MacOS or Linux.

To be fair, I get notifications of "important updates" on my Fedora Workstation more often than I get on Windows. (Or at least I think I do; I don't use Windows that often.) Fedora also wants to reboot for nearly every bunch of updated packages that doesn't consist entirely of top-level applications, which seems to mean at least 95% of the times it wants to update.

I think I get it why it wants to reboot: not only is it probably somewhat safer in terms of not screwing anything up in running session, but you can't be sure some running application or service isn't still using an outdated version of a library until you've restarted it. (Not to mention that the Linux kernel updates every week or so nowadays, but those are definitely not the only ones that trigger an update [edit: by which I of course mean "trigger a reboot"].)

I tend to not use the graphical software updater and just ignore its notifications instead, and just update from the command line and reboot when it suits me. That does allow me to not have my workflow interrupted but it doesn't change the fact that I still do get notified of updates that require some kind of action pretty often.

On the other hand, checking for those updates doesn't burn minutes on end of CPU time every time the OS is booted, as it seems to do on Windows 10.

I don't use Windows, but from the comments it seems that Windows just forcibly reboots after some time. I'm sure your Fedora workstation will ask you to reboot, but not just do it without you triggering the action.

AFAIK in Windows there's generally a prompt for rebooting either now or after a delay that can be selected from given options. (I'm not a heavy Windows user either so I might not be right.) I've sometimes found Windows to have rebooted by itself, but that might have been because I wasn't there to react to the prompt.

But no, obviously Fedora doesn't force a reboot, nor does it give a prompt you can accidentally reboot through.

However, a part of the complaints (which I fully understand) seemed to be about the frequency of the updates, and in the name of honesty I just wanted to point out that's not really just a Windows issue.

If I'm on a road trip when my car comes due for service, it doesn't automatically exit the interstate and drive to the first available mechanic.

I wish Windows would let me treat it like a car.

Letting windows update is treating it like a toy.

Remember that time Microsoft let FTDI brick a bunch of knockoffs through the first party update mechanism? Remember when they locked up a bunch of embedded devices with Windows 7 support nags? Remember when they dropped Candy Crush in your start menu, when they decided local accounts now had to be cloud linked, and when they enabled Cortana by default and made it increasingly difficult to opt-out? When they decided to take 30 minutes of your morning without asking (hope you weren't planning on using the computer for anything important)?

When it comes to high-reliability embedded OSes, Microsoft is a case study in inept paternalism. Updates regularly cause problems. Between updates and malware spreading behind a NAT, I'm not at all convinced updates are the lesser of two evils. Ideally, these applications wouldn't run windows, but since they often do, IMO the best approach is to isolate them to the greatest degree possible which includes blocking auto-update (note: not turning it off, blocking it, along with everything else you can get away with).

Local accounts don't have to be cloud-linked! Microsoft just employs dark patterns to make it hard to find how to opt out, and prompts you to "finish setting up your PC" by creating a Microsoft account, after every reboot.

I've also rebooted to find out about Microsoft Edge, the new browser that's now pinned to my taskbar, even after removing Edge several times.

MS finished making Windows into a stable, usable OS and then promptly began turning it into adware.

> Local accounts don't have to be cloud-linked!

I just installed a new Windows 10 VM last week and there was no option to use a local account anymore. None. No dark pattern menu link somewhere hidden in a corner of the screen with low contrast, only the choice between logging in or creating a new Microsoft account. Which took me longer than the whole rest of the installation, because as it turns out generic addresses like "fk_u_ms@outlook.com" are already taken and Microsoft seems very anal about certain choice words.

But at the same time they don't seem to mind if I enter a date from 2018 as my birthdate and the calendar dialog includes decades of future dates, but at least they got the forced online account working...

I installed Windows a few weeks ago and found the option to "set up later," but the ISO is several months old and the computer wasn't connected to network at install time.

The option will appear if the machine is not connected to the Internet.

offline accounts are only available if you are not connected to the internet, or at least you a get a visible create offline user button/link. last month i did a fresh install with the latest iso and i had to unplug my ethernet cable

Can't get any darker than that!

Sorry, but are we talking about Desktop operating system? Because if that's the topic, Linux and BSD have much to learn from Microsoft. Including stability. I can tell you, because it's my job: if you don't want to use outdated software, you should go with rolling distributions, that became stable around 2016. Before that every update was a schrödingers update. Windows are able to rollback updates since Windows 2003.

> Between updates and malware spreading behind a NAT, I'm not at all convinced updates are the lesser of two evils.

You can get your answer looking back to events like Nimda and Code Red.

I would have agreed with you before Windows 10 came out. Afterwards I had to regularly reinstall Windows on most of my machines as well as laptops of close family members because whether it was a boot loop, BSOD every 10 minutes, random switching of keyboard layouts or just performance issues to a point the mouse lagged, there was a whole wave of new bugs suddenly appearing after some forced update.

Now I run a rolling distro since 2018. Development got a whole lot simpler, everything is more enjoyable and to date there's been exactly one noteworthy issue which was resolved after a quick search and 10 minutes.

And since then I've never seen a "new update available" popup dialog, no ads, no Cortana, no "smart" features, and most definitely no need to install third-party software to actually have a usable file search. I even update much more frequently than Windows 10 every forced me to, because for some reason I just never have any issues and I can just do it in the background.

Or join your machine to a domain. No ads, managed updates.

I have said it before, but around half of the machines in my estate are macs, and I have many more reported update problems from them. I think a lot of it is caused by inconsistent updates.

How many people are running their own AD setups? I don't think this is very useful advice.

To be fair, Samba4 setups are super easy, so for the HN crowd it probably isn't terrible advice.

I've been running one at home since the first TP in 2006, and I don't spend any time thinking about or maintaining them (running on Debian)

I would have thought at least some of the people at hn work for companies?

So - like a new car, service about once a year then, after the first year?

I wish that was the case.

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