Microsoft Issues Windows 10 Upgrade Warning

[Cathoholic]

Free alternative to Windows platform for those that may be tired of this kind of thing . .

https://linuxmint.com/download.php

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Jan 26, 2019,9:10 pm

Microsoft Issues Windows 10 Upgrade Warning​

Gordon Kelly Senior Contributor

Consumer Tech

I write about technology’s biggest companies

The problems associated with Windows 10’s most controversial feature are well known, but now Microsoft has warned users it will soon be consuming more of your computer’s resources to enforce it…

In a new blog post, Microsoft program manager Jesse Rajwan confirmed that the company is taking measures to ensure Windows 10 computers will always be able to upgrade automatically. And you might not like it. . . .

. . . All of which would be good news, except Windows 10 updates have been a dangerous mess for some time. . . .

. . . Microsoft must surely improve the stability of Windows 10 updates. Even fan sites have written about Microsoft having a “Software Quality Problem” and, in 2018 alone, Windows 10 upgrades caused serious problems in January, April, October and November . . .

Microsoft Says Windows 10 Will Commandeer Storage For Upgrade

Microsoft has warned users Windows 10 will soon consume more of your computer's resources...

www.forbes.com

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Linked above (from a 2017 article) . . . .

Microsoft Makes Windows 10’s Worst Feature Worse​

Windows 10 keeps improving and next month it will take a major step forward, but unfortunately seems determined to make by far and away its worst feature even worse …

At its heart Windows 10 suffers from a fundamental lack of user control. It executes Microsoft’s belief . . . .

Microsoft Makes Windows 10's Worst Feature Worse

Windows 10 is about to get a lot better, and a lot worse and it could cost you money...

www.forbes.com

 

[Trader]

There was an old joke I remember:

Q) How does Microsoft test software?

A) They release it.

Some things never change.

 

[Rhubarb]

That’s why I’m migrating all my files to a Commodore 64 I just bought.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

I see the mandatory updates as both annoying but necessary. About 20 to 15 years back Windows had earned a reputation for being unstable and insecure;crashing often and some new security flaw being discovered frequently and exploited from time to time through viruses. Sometimes the fixes for these exploits had already been released but users simply had not installed them. Sometimes the crash was caused by a third party low level driver in which Microsoft had no hand in writing.

The severity of the outcomes from not installing a security update can be severe. While not involving Windows the Equifax databreach occurred because Equifax was slow to install a security update on their Linux based web server that had been released months prior.

Microsoft changed their approach to a security first model. Software components nolonger had default passwords. Applications did not get administrative priviledges by default without the users permissions. (Those that experienced Windows Vista might remember frequent security prompts; these were caused by applications trying to do administrative level actions even when they didn’t need too. Application developers eventually had to change their ways too). The video driver model was changed so that poorly written third party video drivers could not crash the computer as often along with a message being added to identify the driver maker as the source of the problem, and security updates were made mandatory for the consumer level versions of Windows. Professional and Enterprise versions can still delay or stop updates all together though.

With mandatory updates the situation of a security flaw being able to automatically spread from one computer to another occurs less frequently since the window of time to exploit the update is now smaller. Having drive space reserved for updates is in my opinion not so bad. It’s making a decision on a computer being more secure and a computer having a bit more space. Given the cost of a security breach of either ones own computer or of someone elses’s computer that happens to have the personal data of others on it the few gigs of spapce being reserved is a small price to pay. For computers with a modest amount of free space already it’s a price that would never be noticed.

 

[vz71]

So limiting disk space so that auto update fails will no longer be a viable strategy to prevent updates.
Time to move to another OS.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

So limiting disk space so that auto update fails will no longer be a viable strategy to prevent updates.

Windows LTSB (Long term stable branch) is the version that gets much less updates. Unless an update is highly critical it doesn’t get pushed out to the LTSB builds for quite some time. Similarly there are LTSB versions of Ubuntu Linux. In Enterprise environments the device management tools give much more control over updates and delaying or preventing them.

Officially, LTSB is a specialized edition of Windows 10 Enterprise that promises the longest intervals between feature upgrades of any version of the operating system.

Where other Windows 10 servicing models push feature upgrades to customers every six months, LTSB does so only every two or three years. That means fewer changes during a set timeline, a less-involved upgrade effort, and fewer disruptions as well as fewer possibilities for applications breaking because of a modification of the OS.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.co...indows/faq-windows-10-ltsb-explained.amp.html

 

[vz71]

Windows LTSB (Long term stable branch) is the version that gets much less updates. Unless an update is highly critical it doesn’t get pushed out to the LTSB builds for quite some time.

That is what is said.
My practical experience says otherwise.