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Comment by lemoncookiechip | Hacker News Reader

> On Windows, there will now be fewer interruptions because Firefox won’t prompt you for updates. Instead, a background agent will download and install updates even if Firefox is closed.

I rather they didn't.

EDIT: Ah good, they have an option in the General Settings to disable the background updater.

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Why hasn't Microsoft created a system service for this?

It's just inefficient to have each and every installed app run a service… I suppose they take care of it for Windows Store apps, but I don't see why they couldn't make a service for other apps too.

Same on the Mac, of course.

Windows Store?

Microsoft's solution would be terrible for 3rd party vendors.

Yep... just standardize a data format for updates (eg. json with the newest stable and beta version numbers and links directly to the upgrade exe), and each app would just add the json url to the service, and the service would check all the updatable software periodically and just primpt the user to update.

They promised a proper package manager and repositories way back in the day before Windows 8 was released. You probably know the crap you got instead.

winget

They have sort of started to do it. But it seems to be very adhoc in how it is supported. A couple of packages I use are 2-3 versions behind in that system.

There should be something like /etc/cron.daily in windows. The jobs run sequentially so don't overload bandwidth and other resource (hopefully).

Windows Task Scheduler

It's still a nasty old MMC snap-in in Windows 11 from its legacy as an old, classic NT component for advanced admins only. Maybe one day it will get a bit more love and UI polish. (Though it's not like cron has ever had a good UI.)

That just instantly makes me think 'what are the attack surfaces, and vulnerabilities of such a service and how can I abuse it?'

Both vendors want you to use their preferred “store” system instead, unfortunately.

They do with Windows Store. Anyone remember when Firefox was actually available in the Windows Store as either an alpha or beta with Windows 8? I still wish this were so because my most used apps I use the store versions.

The "de-siloing" of some of the Microsoft Store in Windows 11 is currently in beta for Windows 10 (and partly for Windows 7) allows a lot more app distribution schemes into the store (including "give us the URL for your existing EXE/MSI Installer and we can even check it for updates") and I hope that will bring more apps back to the Store. I also would love to standardize on just a single update agent with an easy to manage GUI versus the bad old XP days of every app under the sun thinking it needs a Windows Service just to annoy you with update prompts.

I assume they're going to use the Task Scheduler like Google, Dropbox, Microsoft, etc, etc use for updates.

I'm really glad they added this.

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