Technology

On Linux, when you update, it downloads the latest thing and installs it. 10 minutes tops. On arch you gotta watch it a bit more, but you signed up for that.

On windows it updates almost as frequently as Linux. Except it takes much longer to update. A new install can sit there churning for more than a half hour. Why? Didn’t I just download the latest iso? Even the incremental ones are painful. It also does this sequential crap where it updates, reboots, and then updates again. (Sometimes even a third time). Then you’ve got the bugs. I don’t think there’s been a single windows update in over a year that just went smoothly. I’ve run across two that flat out refused to install (blocking further updating), and one that broke things.

Windows update is bad enough for a regular use case. It’s downright painful if you haven’t booted windows in a while (think dual boot setups) where you have to pay this update tax just because you switched to windows to do that one thing.

The author is not being whiny, they are 100% correct.

"I enrolled my laptop into Windows 11 Insiders Program that delivers updates on a more frequent basis, turned it off for half a year and then got mad that I missed a bunch of updates, so I decided to sit there and mash the update button to constantly ping for updates instead of doing literally anything else while it's updating, because I wanted to run tests and had to be fully up-to-date."

Microslop got a lot of issues, but this is fucking ridiculous, the author sounds insufferable.

"But who in the temple is going to sit there for 10 minutes or more while this downloads new updates and reboots?"

Oh, idk, people who don't enroll themselves into a faster paced update cycle.

"And may the gods help you if you buy a brand new PC that's been sitting on a shelf for months or years. You might have hours of updates after you first take it out of the box."

I don't know a single piece of electronic that doesn't require updating after purchasing. Hours, though? Is this guy on a 10kbps connection or where is this fantasy coming from?

You're saying it like Microsoft doesn't punish you for using Windows frequently.

Their update server seems universally throttled. It should somehow selectively throttle, like default to a slow download but if the user is sitting right there and needs to use the damn laptop, allow a button to manually release throttling and download quickly.

I've had nothing but problems with win update. Since I've switched to the win10 alphabet version recently to get extended update support, update seems to fail and require manual download of update packages. It's been a real pain.

I was helping another team at work a couple of years ago, and during the pandemic shortages they had ordered pallets of computers at a time rather than just ordering as needed like they usually did before and after the shortages. I was tasked with babysitting 5 of those laptops which had been sitting in storage for over a year while they applied updates and whatnot.

I kid you not, babysitting those 5 laptops took the entire business day to get up to date (they for whatever reason did not have any flash drives so I couldn't simply install the latest ISO) and one of the laptops managed to delete all of the keyboard drivers from itself so I had to use the onscreen softkeyboard to attempt to fix it, and ultimately used the manufacturer restore partition to reset it and restart the update process as the cleanest solution

I also got minimal other work done that day as every step of course required some manual intervention on the laptops. I shudder to imagine the scale of lost productivity across the entire world at the hands of Microslop

I use windows like once a year to update some random bios or firmware and it always takes a goddamn long time. I needed to use intel eeupdate to fix wrong checksum on my ghetto cheap intel 10g nic and it took like an hour of update bootloop in my seldom used windows drive. I still have some linux computers using ide drives and its faster to update.

Seems a like of people here have never used windows (10) on a hdd

Working on updates

20 % complete

Please dont turn off your computer.

Author is kind of a whiny idiot. This doesn't invalidate the issue, but basically everything they do sets themselves up for failure.

They also illustrated that it is getting better - and it is. Windows 7 updates - especially from SP1 - were voodoo science (if you weren't lucky enough to have imaging/etc). Windows 8 was better, 10 even more so, and 11 is just 10 but otherwise awful.

Install Linux, Problem Solved.

It's a torture for seldom used Linux PCs as well. In short any PC that isn't updated for a long period of time is going to spend a long period of time updating with the possibility of breaking things.

I boot my Linux desktop to game once in a while. I'll usually patch it and reboot it first. I have fast internet and I'd be blown away if it ever took more than 5 minutes. Windows, however... Holy shit. Some updates or upgrades take hours.

My opinion is that linux's biggest issue is vendor support. Imagine if vendors supported Linux like they do windows. It would be a substantially better OS to use. Imagine adobe and ms office just ran out of the box no problem. Who would want to use windows? It's so bad now.

When I enroll a new device at work I have literally one day only to let it run through autopilot (hybrid setup) let all policies (GPO and MDM) trigger and install all the updates (windows and vantage (Lenovo))

Ironically this still an improvement over the HP devices filled to the top with slop…

But imagine giving such a device to a new coworker 😂 as MS intends you to do with autopilot (i set it up with my account and switch the primary after all updates are done)

back when i still dual-booted windows, one time i hadn’t used it in ~2 months, and the automatic update was so big it kept crashing my shitty wifi

i literally could not use windows with the internet on or else it would crash trying to download the updates…

I maintain a small Windows dual boot for taking certification exams (that don't run on Linux). It's torture to update it once every 6 months. 3-4 hours requiring multiple reboots.

use 'policy plus' and disable windows update