I've been a lifelong Windows user, but I've come to feel that Windows needs to be completely replaced. We simply cannot trust Microsoft with mission-critical software any longer.
Why are there ads in paid software? Why is Microsoft content having a separation of "serious" Windows and consumer Windows, delineated by ads and spyware?
The system would ask you to reboot the computer, at which point it would try to install the update. That failed with a bluescreen, requiring an automatic restore. This process took around 30 minutes on an SSD.
So far seems innocuous, but the thing is, as this was a mandatory update, after one or two days it would display an un-dismissable popup over the entire screen demanding a restart, which would repeat the process above.
This caused data loss in applications if the user didn't have the opportunity to save whatever data was in memory. Remember, the popup is undismissable, there were no ahead of time warnings, and the timing varied (so you couldn't even rely on "the computer will fuck up at 16:03" or whatever).
We generally don't, most servers and mission critical infrastructure runs Linux or a BSD. What scares me is that many medical devices do run on Windows and that is a future Therac-25 like incident waiting to happen ( https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Therac-25 )
The computer tied to the x-ray machine did a forced restart for Windows update, this is back in the days of Windows 7, and I had to get my teeth x-rayed all over again after we sat and waited for 20 minutes.
It's absolutely not. The amount of things that use the Linux kernel for critical network and infrastructure projects, that are mostly hidden to the public... Or that are built on a foundation of something with a clear Linux heritage.
Windows is probably the most visible important piece of software with a GUI.
Not on the cellphone, smartv, router, supercomputer, webserver or tablet I use. Actually, they all run the same (with some customization) kernel.
Supermarket checkouts, public services, small-scale logistics, health, just plain old office workers, and so on.
An undeniably large slice of companies and public sectors that do not have a dedicated IT staff rely on Windows-based computers to organize and operate their activities. Outages to those probably have more direct impact on actual everyday people going about their lives than an outage in a Mars rover or lack of WiFi access.
Just to be clear I'm not playing teams here, *nix-based systems are ridiculously important too, but the open-source base is arguably a more - democratic? healthy? stable? I lack of a better word - development process, and its importance does not lessen the importance of other systems.
Tablets, smartphones and smart tvs have been of increasing importance on education activities, specially after the pandemic. My router is used for ALL my internet traffic, important or not. Webservers... basically most of what most things people do online. And supercomputers are right now doing high relevancy tasks like running climate models, simulating protein folding, drug interactions and improving vehicle's safety.
I'd disagree those aren't mainly used for important work.
Let's just say they're both insanely important to our continued functioning digital existence. Without working Linux or Windows we are quite fucked.