With Windows 10, the update approach is set to change substantially. Microsoft is acknowledging the need, and even desirability, of making regular incremental improvements to its operating system. It’s also, however, acknowledging the different appetite for change between consumers and enterprise users.
While all users, both enterprise and otherwise, will be using the same core operating system, for the first time, there will be different update policies for different kinds of user. The old fiction of not making feature changes to a shipping operating system is finally being put to bed.
A very sensible move in the current computing environment. I wonder if regular users, too, can opt for the slower update policy. There’s a UI for the settings in the Windows 10 Technical Preview, but it’s non-functional.
A good move, but …
There’s two things I REALLY wish they’d add:
– An easy way to slipstream all current updates into an install disc, so you don’t have to reboot 3 dozen times after you install to get all the updates. (I know there’s usually 3rd party tools for this, but I’d rather just have this built into the OS.)
– An option to automatically apply updates, but ONLY when a reboot is NOT required. I had to turn off automatic updates because I’d set my computer to do some long-running task at night, only to find out the next morning that the PC had rebooted itself halfway through the operation because of updates. Now I’m being constantly prompted to install virus and malware updates
Windows 8 updates, far too often require reboots when it is not needed. Example net drivers, just restart the netstack and it should be just fine.
I am growing fond of windows 8 as long as i do not have to use the abhorrant UI and can use litestep and powershell instead. One LiteStep decveloper (or he claimed to be atleast) said that using alternative shells might be a lot harder in the future as microsoft cracks down on malware. So soon i might have to disable the ui and use powershell only.
Sometimes reboots are needed, because reloading modules might not be clean enough.
Other times it is just to keep people happy according to their expectations, even when not needed.
People got used to rebooting computers for updates, even user oriented distributions GNU/Linux like Ubuntu always suggest a reboot after updates.
I’ve never seen Ubuntu do that unless the currently running kernel has been updated.
Which happens in almost every Ubuntu update.
That is not true – last 2 months had only 1 restart for me. Ubuntu 14.04
Me neither. Linux doesn’t “suggest” rebooting unless the reboot is necessary, which is very rare and mostly limited to kernel updates.
Linux filesystems allow updating files which are currently in use/open/etc..
NTFS does not allow that, hence the need to reboot to apply updates on windows.
Because you will still be running the old version of the file while the disk has a new one because the filesystem allowed you to update the file on disk.
For example, if libpng.so.50.100 is updated to libpng.so.50.101, all applications will still be using the old library till they are restarted while newly ran applications will be using libong.so.50.101 and this is where Linux filesystems (ext4, etc…) are great.
Second issue:
Both windows and linux allow reloading of drivers. However, Linux allows to restart a larger part of the stack without a reboot. update xorg-server and nvidia driver -> exit X, rmmod nvidia, modprobe nvidia and start X again. Even PID1 can be reexcuted now with systemd along with udevd, etc..
Edited 2014-10-13 08:32 UTC
People still use LiteStep?!
Even update roll-ups would be nice. I haven’t counted with Windows 7, but XP had about 150 post-SP3 updates by the time support ended. A roll-up of the more stable/standard ones, say every six or twelve months, would cut down the update count quite a bit.
There is a way, the 3rd party tools are just GUI’s on top of Microsoft’s command line tools. It would be good is Microsoft released updated ISO images, the same as Canonical do with Ubuntu LTS versions.
I know with group policies, there is an option to apply updates any time as long as a reboot isn’t required. I’ve never investigated applying this to individual computers, but I would think it’s possible.
Does the average ‘Joe Six-pack’ even know let alone care about Group Policies? The answer has to be a huge NO they don’t.
All they care about is the endless stream of updates that need reboots when they shouldn’t and how it interrupts their viewing of the NFL/Pron/Babes in the wood/whatever.
MS Really need to fix this issue.
The point about consolidated updates is a good one. The Server 2008R2 first update is not some 300+Mb. (The one that you load after the initial install) and that does not include .Net 3.51. Not everyone has the time,space or inkling to build a WSUS server. They just want to get the frigging thing installed and configured and usable.
My gripe about the next version of Windows Server is why on earth would I want it to go out and connect itself to all the TV’s etc in my organization? They are still mixing up the Desktop/laptop with the server room. Lets hope that this is one thing that gets removed before release.
There’s NTLite for the first one (yes, third-party, but one of the best). Plus it can do a whole ton of other customizations. Well worth the purchase to help the developer out, IMHO.
http://www.ntlite.com/
I thought it was limited to XP. Microsoft should allow Update proxy, so that one computer in your home download the updates and act as an update server, so that the other computers don’t need too to connect to the internet and can update from the already downloaded packages, automatically without having to download them one by one and applying them one by one, crossing fingers they are installed in the correct order.
Kochise
You mean Windows Server Update Services?
My main gripe about the current MS updating process is that it does not save the received updates into a “Received Updates” folder. I am aware of third-party tools for this (at least there were for WinXP – not sure for Win7 and Win8) but this is not something the average user would likely look for on the web and install.
Not having a “Received Updates” folder means re-downloading everything when performing a restore of the original OS from the recovery partition. And in the processing consuming bandwidth for something already downloaded.
Many home routers now have an USB port for connecting shared devices. Having the “Received Updates” folder on a shared hard drive would allow any of the 3, 5, 7 MS devices to look there first for updates and only if not in the folder to download them.
Of course, there would have to be features/mechanisms to ensure the integrity of the installables in this “Received Updates” folder.
Windows Update is a dealbreaker for me, on my tablet. What made Microsoft think that having the OS decide it’s going to take fifteen minutes to shut down sometimes, and another fifteen minutes and a restart to boot back up was even remotely acceptable for a mobile device like a tablet? When I hit the power button on my tablet, I want to be up and functional in less than thirty seconds. Call me spoilt, but if my desktop (Linux) can be done with updates in five minutes total, without a restart, and when my phone can stream most small updates into the regular work flow without interrupting use, I expect better of my tablet.
As someone who usually uses Linux, one of my least favourite aspects of working on Windows boxes is working with packages, specifically the update process. On Linux I can set the machine to automatically update and it’ll quietly download and apply updates without disrupting work flow. Linux distros don’t automatically reboot in the middle of my work either. Plus, if I want to, I can install or remove multiple programs at once.
In the Windows world people seem accustomed to waiting several minutes for their computers to shut down because that is when Windows applies updates. I’ve also seen computers take 10-20 minutes to boot up because they are configuring updates, rebooting, doing another round of configuring….
Windows users seem to be stuck between a rock and a hard place. If they don’t auto-update they fall behind on important security updates. If they do auto-update their computers randomly reboot at the least convenient times.
One of my big selling points when getting people to try Linux is: “Your computer won’t randomly reboot and it won’t take forever to boot/shutdown anymore. It’ll just apply security updates without bothering you.”
I’ve been using Windows 8 on my main home PC since its day of launch. I’ve never once noticed it reboot automatically after an update. Here’s what actually happens with mine:
1) If you have it set to download and apply updates automatically, it will do so.
2) Windows then notifies you that you should reboot or shutdown to complete the update. The easiest way is simply to shut it down and walk away when you no longer need to work on the computer.
3) If you don’t feel like having it apply updates on the next reboot or shutdown, you can reboot or shutdown as normal, without the update process being completed.
4) Windows does tell you that it’s eventually going to reboot automatically to finish the update, but this happens only after two days have passed. Since the vast majority of users won’t have their machines on for two days straight, the whole “problem” of automatic reboots simply doesn’t affect them.
They certainly don’t. But they have irritating little quirks of their own: a default install of Fedora, for example, seems to want to download ~150MB of updates every couple of days or so.
Edited 2014-10-11 14:56 UTC
You forgot a trailing 0…
Kochise
Fedora is a cutting edge distribution, basically a test bed for Red Hat. That is why they have such a huge stream of updates. Most stable distributions (RHEL/CentOS, SUSE, Ubuntu LTS, etc) don’t have nearly as many updates.
While it’s true that GNU/Linux distributions don’t require a reboot unless the kernel gets updated, even this is not necessarily true. There are mechanisms that allow you to patch the kernel while it is running, so you can reload the kernel at run time.
On the other hand, not requiring a reboot doesn’t mean you’re safe. For example, if there’s a security problem in a package, you need to restart all the relevant processes in order to be safe. Otherwise you only get the fix on the hard drive, while the vulnerable code is still loaded in memory. Rebooting after updating makes sure that you’re overall safe.
I think GNU/Linux distributions should do a better job in this regard, I think the current situation is poor and, worse, misleading.
I’d like to point out that SUSE tackles this issue nicely. When SUSE finishes an update it lets you know if any running processes or services were affected to the update. You can run “zypper ps” to see details of the processes affected by the most recent update.
This makes it really easy to restart any services which might be affected by security patches. In fact, Ubuntu does something similar if you run updates on Ubuntu Server. It’ll let you know it has updated software that needs to be restarted.
Not all distributions do this, but the ones that are designed for serious server work generalyl let you know when you need to restart patched services.
What I as a consumer would like is for MS to adopt the Apple mentality of all core-OS updates being rolled up into point releases, instead of trickling a whole bunch of reboot-requiring patches once every couple of weeks. At the very least they should improve their update system so that it doesn’t make you install hundreds of updates just to see the Service Pack (which is a roll-up of all the previous updates anyway), the installation of which then gets you to the next step of installing hundreds of updates before seeing the next Service Pack, and so forth… Why can’t the newest Service Pack simply be available for download from the start? I honestly think it is a case of laziness and poor programming on MS’s part, since in my experience it invariably works just fine to manually do an offline download/install of the newest Service Pack on a freshly-installed Windows system, thus shaving off many hours of download/install/restart cycles and multiple gigabytes’ worth of bandwidth.
So I’m curious to wait and see, but I’m not holding my breath… The Windows update infrastructure has remained broken in the above-mentioned and other ways for the past 15, and as long as it continues to be so I will continue to recommend Macs to anyone who wants hassle-free maintenance.
Edited 2014-10-11 23:06 UTC
Mac OS X 10.7.5 freezing since update
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4378205?start=15&tstart=0
Mac OS X 10.5: Software Update stops responding during “Configuring installation”
http://support.apple.com/kb/ts2383
More examples can be provided
You’d have done better to provide current examples. Lion will be 3 versions ago once Yosemite hits, Leopard will be 5. That’s like saying Windows update is broken since, hey, it was broken on XP and Vista so it must still be broken.
** For the record I do think Windows’ update situation is still broken, though not quite as bad as it once was.
You just need to ask.
mac osx 10.9 Mavericks wifi issue
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5506422
Should we also play this game with iOS as well?
I will only recommend a book for hassle free maintenance.
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