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Comment by xboxnolifes | Hacker News Reader

> I don’t boot into Windows often; it’s only to ensure my software works on it.

There's the issue. And it's the same issue I constantly hear from people who use Windows similar to how the author does. The problem? They use Windows so infrequently that every time they boot into, and out of, it it start downloading/installing/preparing updates + background tasks that have accrued over weeks/months.

Is this situation ideal for the author's use case? Absolutely not. But does it actually get in the way of office work, like the author references? Absolutely not, since those machines will be booting daily and get hiccups, not slogs.

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Agree with what you're saying but the way Windows handles updates is probably my biggest bugbear with it so to me this more or less amounts to victim blaming. If I want to boot my machine for five minutes after a month of inactivity just to accomplish some quick task, why should I be forced into a thirty+ minute update process? Likewise those updates that happen in the background while you're working and when you need to reboot, surprise! You have to wait five-fifteen minutes while it does (something?) before you can proceed with your day.

I'm not totally down on Windows in general but this, coupled with other problems, has led me to switch to Fedora as my daily driver and so far I can't see myself ever going back.

If its a problem you can disable updates.

The alternative is no updates by default, and we saw what a mess that was back in the win 95/2000 era.

Can you? On my machine, you can only pause them for some time.

You need windows pro, but you basically set a bunch of registry keys/GPO to disable updates.

Yes, Shutup10 [1a][1b] and misc other powershell scripts people have written can disable some things with varying degrees of success.

[1a] - https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 [freeware]

[1b] - https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/86bf0b60f97f72bdbbf01e45... [scan results]

Only with Enterprise or LTSB/LTSC but even that is changing as far as I know, and most people don't have access to those distributions anyway. Besides I don't want to turn off updates - that's a false dichotomy. I want to be allowed to set my own update schedule like someone who knows what they're doing with their own PC.

It works for windows 10 pro also - my laptop has been sitting pending a restart for about a week and a half now, and my shutdown menu has options to restart/shutdown without updating.

I agree. Windows updates and I are not on good terms ever since they decided that they knew better than me for which audio drivers to have installed and force uninstalled drivers a few years back in one of their bigger updates. I can't reinstall these drivers without windows automatically uninstalling them each update, so I've since had to use virtual audio cables and an equalizer to have audible voice input.

Forcing updates on the majority of the population has absolutely been a net positive on the world. The lack of exploitable machines around easily out weights a slightly faster access in an odd use case.

This has nothing to do with forcing the updates - just the way they're installed. If I boot a Linux distro after a few months it can be updated in the background in minutes. Then either you restart the services or they get restarted with the next reboot. This mostly does not affect your workflow at all.

> just the way they're installed

> they get restarted with the next reboot

And if after the next reboot your services or OS dies - it's only on you. But not if this is Windows OS - then it's Microsoft, all Redmond citizens and Gates personally is the culprit.

You can restart 99% of services in Windows just fine, it's just most of the software written by bazillion of 'software developers' always find a way to break if something suddenly disappears from the system. And no, they do NOT write a proper dependencies for their services, hell, they still install in 'C:\SOFTWARENAME' because they still can't in the long file names [including spaces] AND they are still shitting in their install folder (Hello, 'C:\Program Files\MariaDB 10.5 (x64)\data\ibdata1'!).

Add shitty drivers for a bazillions devices, written by other shitty developers - and now it is way, way, WAY easier to just reboot the machine.

And don't forget: your shitty webcam managed to crash the system while it updated? It's Gates fault, not the author of webcam's driver.

EDIT: Oh great, Baader Meinhof as it is, while I moved my workstation VM:

You know what is forcefully killed explorer.exe first (hey, it's my shell! I have opened some windows there and there!) and then rebooted the whole machine WITHOUT asking anything from me?

Fucking Nextcloud client.

And this is not the first time when this shit happens.

That's a false dichotomy - there are other workflows available. And it's not an odd use case for me at least; I've cursed Windows Update more times than I can count in the last five years.

Honestly installing Windows updates is far less painful than installing MacOS updates - they seem to take an absolute AGE to finish, whereas Windows updates, even to relatively major update versions, are much faster.

Heck, even an Ubuntu dist-upgrade is not a particularly quick process.

dist-upgrade is a completely different thing to windows update.

I shouldn't need to run my laptop for days at 100% to please some Windows Store optimization service, just because I haven't booted it up for a month. I have a desktop, the laptop is for emergencies. But it's useless because Windows insists on emptying the battery when I need it.

You don't need to run your laptop for days at 100%. That's complete fiction.

Nope. It can do this for days if you leave the laptop off long enough. And then the CPU usage will suddenly drop to 0% when it's done. It's not even updating, it's Windows Store / universal app shenanigans.

You're assuming it's actually doing something important. I'm assuming there's a bug in Windows. Which is more likely?

I still find it hard to believe that Windows will take your CPU to 100% for literal days given any vacation from use.

That being said, I realized after replying that I removed most of the background processes like the store, so I was thinking mostly just update related stuff. I have no idea how bad some of the "optional" services are.

The time it runs at 100% seems to go up exponentially the longer you leave the system off.

It just seems like very bad programming to me.

Could it be all of your windows store apps updating? The longer you leave it, the more than will have updates?

yeah this is like someone complaining their petrol car keeps gumming up because they only start it every 2 years.

I have a box with openSUSE that hasn't been powered on in a couple years. If I plugged it in and powered it on today, I could use it right away with none of the crap that has been described in the article.

Of course I would want to do an upgrade in due time, but that's on me, and won't make the system unusable.

We can make a conclusion on this case being seen by Microsoft as non meaningful on average and from my understanding for those who care, they have options to be applied by your Corp IT team to enforce the needed type of policy.

Probably I'd do the same - professionalls have way to configure system, non-pros better be guided/enforced a bit

I have Linux installed on my laptop. It's always ready to go no matter what. I only update it when I want to. Usually every few months now, but I've left it alone for over a year and there were absolutely zero problems.

Corollary, I have an infrequently used Ubuntu install on my laptop which I recently booted up to run a serial terminal emulator on.

Went to install minicom and apt was locked due to package manager doing updates.

Windows chose to act behind users with it's OBSCENE update system because Windows designer consider users dumb and that instead of try educating them they need to act replacing people.

This is a business move because you can munge more money from dumb than from smart people but is definitively a bad choice for the society in general and for business in long terms.

Since first Xerox desktop concept implementation (desktop model of computing if far older) ALL major players try to cut out users control, initially IBM then Microsoft then the GAFAM, all try to sell locked-in tools able to do only few things in few way to sell more and the result is an explosion of crap to the point that modern systems fall on their own weight. And beware, a desktop these days it's just an endpoint or to use an old term a dumb terminal of remote services, typically on some giant's cloud. Your car crushing while driving at high speed will be a bit more lethal, and that's already happen with current "drive aids" like "speed limiter" who read road sign confusing for instance exit roads (sorry I do not the correct name in English, the small roads you take to going out of a highway and so on) signs to main roads one auto-breaking strongly and suddenly the vehicle or anti-collision systems who use a simple stereocam behind the internal mirror and see a flying leaf for a wall, just to cite something I've experienced personally.

Remember a thing: humans MUST ALWAYS have the last word on anything. Any tool must be in TOTAL control of the human it serve. Sometimes such total control will makes disasters that's for sure, BUT many other times avoid even bigger ones.

Agreed, but as a sidenote:

It's crazy that this is how it works. No other OS does this. I can not not into MacOS or Linux for years, and this still wouldn't happen.

You can turn all the auto updates off if you have windows pro and above.

I cant say ubuntu is immune for example, I've booted into a rarely used ubuntu installation on my laptop before and wanted to test something, and apt was locked due to the update manager running in the background.

To be fair, even Windows 7 will not do this (assuming you've configured it to be), it's really Microsoft's insistence on Windows 10 that we have this mess.

I don't think it's crazy that windows tries to do all this work behind the scenes so the user doesn't have to worry about it. I do find it crazy how poorly Windows seems to be at running forced system background tasks without absolutely throttling a system, without notice, though.

The problem is it isn't behind the scenes if the machine is totally unusable. This bad behavior during updates and Windows' tendency to get progressively slower to boot even without adding software is why I walked away.

> No other OS does this.

Really? I get the "System restart required" advisory from Ubuntu Server pretty much weekly unless I disable the auto-updater.

I get this on Ubuntu servers too. It just won't force it on you but I assume Windows server doesn't either.

Because the point is not what happens when the user/administrator should reboot, the point is what happens if the user/administrator ignores that advice for a week or two.

That's because something like the kernel is ready to be upgraded, and this is something Windows will also need a rebooted for.

Also, _weekly?_ That sounds off.

Except then you're probably stuck on a version that has exploitable holes UNTIL you upgrade. At least Microsoft is now ensuring people are somewhat protected.

> There's the issue.

No. There's the catalyst for the situation - maybe. But systems do not have to do updates that way. The issue is how Windows does updates and software installation. Other systems prove it can be better, faster, and doesn't have to take over what you're doing.

> But does it actually get in the way of office work, like the author references? Absolutely not, since those machines will be booting daily and get hiccups, not slogs.

It absolutely does get in the way. Less than a month ago the Windows machine at work once again decided that updating itself was more important than allowing me to do my job. I timed it. Windows wasted over 20 minutes of my time. Do I get to send Microsoft a bill?

I usually have a VM for Win stuff so I don't have to reboot my computer. Especially for the use case of 15 minutes of building with MSVC.

Office workstations — agree, not an issue. But what about all those single purpose notebooks in the office that are used to control specific hardware?

Without specifics, it's hard to say. You can disable windows updates and only update when you please. That's probably a better solution for a company anyway. Bring the power back to yourself to decide when to update your device.

> office that are used to control specific hardware?

So they [configuration] are valuable? Then why they are allowed to connect to office WLAN and talk to the whole Internet?

You can mark your internet connections as metered and windows will never use those to download updates.

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