Windows Update WTFs
-
It doesn't matter how well the update system is designed, someone will always be like "I don't wanna reboot, I just wanna see the dancing kittehs! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
-
@RaceProUK said in Windows Update WTFs:
It doesn't matter how well the update system is designed, someone will always be like "I don't wanna reboot, I just wanna
see the dancing kittehsshoot some aliens! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
-
@Jaloopa as long as they're shoulder aliens, this should be acceptable, right?
-
@dkf yes, but you've got to have the "close elevator door" button to keep people feeling in control.
(just an ex-post joke, you're right)
-
@sh_code Pretty sure that stopped working with Windows 8 when Microsoft decided that programs could no longer be special little snowflakes and pause shutdown/suspend/restart indefinitely.
-
@Tsaukpaetra said in Windows Update WTFs:
@Dreikin said in Windows Update WTFs:
How long have these options been there?
Not very. I didn't get them until around "creators" update.
I think they might have been available before, but only through group policy (and therefore not available to most home users).
-
@dkf said in Windows Update WTFs:
Why do some manufacturers do that?
Because it's basically mandated by the Android standards and it makes reliable factory resets without destroying data way, way easier?
-
@powerlord said in Windows Update WTFs:
@sh_code Pretty sure that stopped working with Windows 8 when Microsoft decided that programs could no longer be special little snowflakes and pause shutdown/suspend/restart indefinitely.
Actually, I've seen Windows 10 abort a shut down in that scenario.
-
@accalia said in Windows Update WTFs:
Just set active hours that make sense for you and let the necessary for your security updates to happen.
As soon as they let me set up any connection as metered (yes, I have had legit cases of metered connections that I couldn't set up as such), sure.
Windows update cost me money unnecessarily twice by now. I ain't letting it do it the third time.
-
@Onyx Which connections are that? Because I've been able to set both LAN and WLAN connections as metered.
-
@Rhywden said in Windows Update WTFs:
@Onyx Which connections are that? Because I've been able to set both LAN and WLAN connections as metered.
It only let me set up WiFi as metered. But not modem, which is what you get when you use one of those 3G USB dongles. Which always have a data cap...
-
@heterodox said in Windows Update WTFs:
Because it's basically mandated by the Android standards and it makes reliable factory resets without destroying data way, way easier?
But instead it ruins user experience as Google's own updates gradually fill up that 1GB leaving nothing left for apps that people want, and which refuse to install on the SD card and keep all their functionality. Yay. :(
-
@Onyx said in Windows Update WTFs:
@Rhywden said in Windows Update WTFs:
@Onyx Which connections are that? Because I've been able to set both LAN and WLAN connections as metered.
It only let me set up WiFi as metered. But not modem, which is what you get when you use one of those 3G USB dongles. Which always have a data cap...
That's been my experience too. My previous phone didn't hotspot - so I tethered it. Never could set the metered connection (that was about a year ago - maybe an update has fixed that). My new phone will hotspot, so this isn't really an issue anymore...
-
Microsoft being unable to figure out how to apply updates without trashing everything I have going on and rebooting the system is their problem. They need to stop trying to make it my problem. Users have been complaining about this for well over a decade, but what do they do? Flat-out insult every one of us to our faces by coming out with Windows 10, which makes reboots mandatory.
Thou Shalt Not Reboot My Computer Without My Explicit Permission. Period. Until Microsoft fixes this, I will not move to Windows 10.
-
@masonwheeler said in Windows Update WTFs:
Flat-out insult every one of us to our faces by coming out with Windows 10, which makes reboots mandatory.
Um… They've been mandatory since XP. Even Linux has forced reboots occasionally, for kernel updates.
-
@RaceProUK said in Windows Update WTFs:
@masonwheeler said in Windows Update WTFs:
Flat-out insult every one of us to our faces by coming out with Windows 10, which makes reboots mandatory.
Um… They've been mandatory since XP. Even Linux has forced reboots occasionally, for kernel updates.
In before: "But you can monkeypatch the kernel!"
-
@Rhywden said in Windows Update WTFs:
In before: "But you can monkeypatch the kernel!"
Isn't that still a work-in-progress?
-
@RaceProUK said in Windows Update WTFs:
@Rhywden said in Windows Update WTFs:
In before: "But you can monkeypatch the kernel!"
Isn't that still a work-in-progress?
Well, according to this it has its own set of challenges:
Memory of the currently running kernel is overwritten by the new kernel, while the old one is still executing.
-
@RaceProUK said in Windows Update WTFs:
Even Linux has forced reboots occasionally, for kernel updates
Compared to Windows Almost-Everything-Needs-A-Reboot.
-
@RaceProUK said in Windows Update WTFs:
Even Linux has forced reboots occasionally, for kernel updates.
Mint doesn't update automatically on default settings, and even when you choose to update everything the default is to update everything but the kernel. And even with a kernel update you can just say you'll reboot later and it gets honored, meaning no reboot for update is ever forced. You just keep using the old version until you reboot the program/service/OS. Everything is in your control.
-
@TimeBandit said in Windows Update WTFs:
Compared to Windows Almost-Everything-Needs-A-Reboot.
-
@Atazhaia said in Windows Update WTFs:
Everything is in your control.
Well, until you reboot and discover that the new kernel is incompatible with all the modules and instantly panics.... And by that time the working kernel is so long gone it wasn't even a distant memory... And you end up reinstalling the whole system because version disparity means it's impossible to actually service the frankenstein machine you've ended up with...
-
@Tsaukpaetra said in Windows Update WTFs:
And by that time the working kernel is so long gone it wasn't even a distant memory...
All linux distros I've used recently have had the opposite problem: a need to manually garbage collect old unused kernels…
-
@dkf said in Windows Update WTFs:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Windows Update WTFs:
And by that time the working kernel is so long gone it wasn't even a distant memory...
All linux distros I've used recently have had the opposite problem: a need to manually garbage collect old unused kernels…
Ii guess I need to try again then. Last time I yes-man'd the update dialog it broke everything, so I'm overly paranoid of updating anything with the word "kernel", "module", or "library" now.
-
@dkf said in Windows Update WTFs:
@sh_code True non-reboot updates ought to be installed automatically with the only options for preventing being those linked to metered network connections (assuming an ordinary user perspective; group policy could have more control).
Also, those options given lead to exactly the issue they're trying to prevent in the first place, namely people turning off security updates so they can shoot some aliens (or other more important things. As long as the option to defer updates indefinitely exists, someone will use it.). The whole point of the forced update stuff is that you can't defer security updates because that's BAD.
Granted, arguments can be made about the user-hostility of the early versions of this system, and about using it for non-security/critical updates, (and about abusing that critical level for non-critical patches, yes GWX I'm looking at you) but overall it's a thing that should be done.
-
@TimeBandit said in Windows Update WTFs:
@RaceProUK said in Windows Update WTFs:
Even Linux has forced reboots occasionally, for kernel updates
Compared to Windows Almost-Everything-Needs-A-Reboot.
Different engineering philosophies leading to different sets of compromises.
Windows prevents executables in use from being deleted or removed, whereas Unix keeps a reference to the original file and is fine with the one on disc being messed around with afterwards. The Windows way means updating a heavily used library requires any application or service using that library to be closed before the update and restarted. For something that's widely used, the simplest way to do that is a restart, since that will close all services and applications.
The Linux way means that anything using the updated library is still running the out of date version and not benefiting from the update. For something that's widely used, that means to get the benefit of an update you probably need to restart. If you keep running for a long time without restarting all of the services relying on whatever's been updated you end up with a partly updated system and all sorts of weird edge cases when different services using ostensibly the same library are actually running different code, which could potentially break a lot of assumptions.
Basically, when there's a wide ranging update in Linux you're best off updating even if technically you can keep going on the weird half-updated system you find yourself on. Like much in Linux there's more flexibility, more ability to shoot yourself in the foot and more likelihood of something completely counterintuitive happening
-
@accalia said in Windows Update WTFs:
Just set active hours that make sense for you and let the necessary for your security updates to happen.
Yeah, I'd like to do that, except that my active hours are not "a single span of at most 12 hours".
-
@Steve_The_Cynic hasn't it been changed to 18 hours in the current build?
-
@Arantor said in Windows Update WTFs:
@Steve_The_Cynic hasn't it been changed to 18 hours in the current build?
Possibly. I haven't looked at it in a while. But my active hours are "a bit in the morning then idle until I come home from work", so they aren't even a single span...
-
@Arantor said in Windows Update WTFs:
@Steve_The_Cynic hasn't it been changed to 18 hours in the current build?
As of the Craters' Pupdate
-
@Steve_The_Cynic So define it as 5pm to 9am as the span of 16 hours that are your active hours. I'm not yet on Creator's Update but mine is set to start at 4pm and run until 4am which covers the times I might be playing games and on weekends I'm not so worried if it wants to do an update.
Except that it never wants to do an update on weekends, it wants to do them Tuesday/Wednesday nights because that's when Patch Tuesday lands...
/me has yet to have a problem with Win10 in terms of updates.
-
@Arantor said in Windows Update WTFs:
@Steve_The_Cynic So define it as 5pm to 9am as the span of 16 hours that are your active hours. I'm not yet on Creator's Update but mine is set to start at 4pm and run until 4am which covers the times I might be playing games and on weekends I'm not so worried if it wants to do an update.
Except that it never wants to do an update on weekends, it wants to do them Tuesday/Wednesday nights because that's when Patch Tuesday lands...
/me has yet to have a problem with Win10 in terms of updates.
The only problem I have with Win10 updates is "Windows Modules Installer Worker". Aka the Molasses Machine. It thinks it's running in the background, but in fact is clearly an invisible thing that's running in the foreground and if you, Mr Cynic, think you're going to use this computer for something foregroundy like a game, well, think again!
-
@Jaloopa said in Windows Update WTFs:
Basically, when there's a wide ranging update in Linux you're best off updating even if technically you can keep going on the weird half-updated system you find yourself on.
I assume you mean you're best off rebooting*.
-
This is also one of the issues where I don't really have any problem regardless of OS. As I shut down my computer when I go to bed any half-updated state in Linux is at most a day. It also means that Windows got a chance to update itself non-intrusively too, except for the period where I was running Windows 8 () which had the most broken Windows Update yet. And early Windows 10 before they fixed their shit.
@Steve_The_Cynic And yeah, that Windows component is a plague regardless of Windows version. Before I replaced my parents computer with something more modern the Windows 7 equivalent would bog down the entire PC to near-unusability for 15+ minutes after every boot as it did... something. I dunno.
-
@Jaloopa said in Windows Update WTFs:
If you keep running for a long time without restarting all of the services relying on whatever's been updated you end up with a partly updated system and all sorts of weird edge cases when different services using ostensibly the same library are actually running different code, which could potentially break a lot of assumptions.
I imagine inter-process communication would be a prime suspect, even if data transfer is serialized and deserialized rather than using raw memory access.
Could you imagine multiple different versions of Chrome running throughout your Chrome processes? I guess forking alleviates that somewhat...
-
@LB_ said in Windows Update WTFs:
I imagine inter-process communication would be a prime suspect, even if data transfer is serialized and deserialized rather than using raw memory access.
A lot of Linux IPC is still text-based and over a local (unix-domain) socket or pipe, which means that updates are not usually a big deal. The binary formats in actual use mostly tend to be pretty stable ones, as they've been around a long time. Shared memory isn't particularly popular (in part as the APIs for working with it are a bit miserable). The main area where big updates cause problems is when someone's doing something big with dbus or the display server, yet neither of those is particularly deeply intertwingled into the kernel and a lot of programs don't need to touch either.
I'm guessing the difference is that Windows has more of a history of using compiler-generated binary messaging for IPC, which makes it more sensitive to minor changes in in-memory object layout. It isn't required to be like that; it's just evolved that way.
-
-
@accalia said in Windows Update WTFs:
so you want a server OS then.
A windows server is a lot of money just to solve the problem of windows update interrupting stuff
-
@Jaloopa said in Windows Update WTFs:
Unix keeps a reference to the original file and is fine with the one on disc being messed around with afterwards.
I hear It's even more fun when you remount root....i
-
@Arantor said in Windows Update WTFs:
@Steve_The_Cynic hasn't it been changed to 18 hours in the current build?
I need a single span of at most 264 hours...
-
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Windows Update WTFs:
The only problem I have with Win10 updates is "Windows Modules Installer Worker".
This!
I have an Azure VM on the lowest instance level, which essentially equates to like 900 MHz and 750 Mb of RAM.
Despite Windows claiming no updates are needed, without fail TIWorker.exe is chugging away on something before I can even log in...
-
@wharrgarbl said in Windows Update WTFs:
@accalia said in Windows Update WTFs:
so you want a server OS then.
A windows server is a lot of money just to solve the problem of windows update interrupting stuff
if you need always on never reboot then get yourself a proper server OS. tasks that shouldn't be interrupted, like transcoding media, downloading media, serving websites, that sort f shit, needs to be done on a server. so pull up your big girl panties and use one, if windows server is too much money then use linux.
just don't fuck with keeping your system up to date because that just fucks everyone right up the cornhole.
-
@accalia said in Windows Update WTFs:
so pull up your big girl panties
Great, now I need to buy this also ?
-
@TimeBandit said in Windows Update WTFs:
@accalia said in Windows Update WTFs:
so pull up your big girl panties
Great, now I need to buy this also ?
big boy undies also work if you call them big girl panties.
-
@accalia said in Windows Update WTFs:
tasks that shouldn't be interrupted, like transcoding media, downloading media, serving websites, that sort f shit, needs to be done on a server.
-
@accalia said in Windows Update WTFs:
@wharrgarbl said in Windows Update WTFs:
@accalia said in Windows Update WTFs:
so you want a server OS then.
A windows server is a lot of money just to solve the problem of windows update interrupting stuff
if you need always on never reboot then get yourself a proper server OS. tasks that shouldn't be interrupted, like transcoding media, downloading media, serving websites, that sort f shit, needs to be done on a server. so pull up your big girl panties and use one, if windows server is too much money then use linux.
just don't fuck with keeping your system up to date because that just fucks everyone right up the cornhole.
So now you have a dangerously out of date server instead? What's the difference? Isn't that just as bad?
-
@boomzilla said in Windows Update WTFs:
So now you have a dangerously out of date server instead?
Only if you never let it restart for updates, or never apply them
@boomzilla said in Windows Update WTFs:
What's the difference?
The difference is you 're using the server grade OS, not the consumer grade OS. different update rules apply, in particular servers are built to be more predictable in their update schedule. which is good. they also have fewer user mode services running which for some reason means that windows needs to restart for fewer updates (no i don't get it either but the empirical evidence i have suggests that this is the case)
@boomzilla said in Windows Update WTFs:
Isn't that just as bad?
Yeah, but at least if you fuck with updates on server OS any "anti-fuck-with-the-updates" patches will be applied to the server OS not the consumer one.
also you'll stop people who don't know better from fucking with their updates and then getting fucked with malware that wouldn't have affected them if they patched.
-
@accalia sounds like a poor rationalization to me.
-
@accalia said in Windows Update WTFs:
fuck
anti-fuck
fucking
fucked
I think I found your favorite word
-
@TimeBandit Profanity is the hallmark of a tragically limited vocabulary.