Microsoft is removing the ability for business users to defer manually Windows 10 feature updates using Windows Update settings starting with the Windows 10 2004/May Update. Microsoft seemingly made this change public with a change in its Windows 10 2004 for IT Pros documentation on June 23.
I’ve read the article three times and I still don’t quite understand what’s going on.
The *feature* updates are similar to service packs. They of course add more features, and change existing ones, and not always to users’ liking.
It was possible to continue using Windows Update for minor updates, without going to an entirely new OS build. It looks like they now are removing that option.
It’s interesting, I think this might be the exact opposite of what many suspect, rather than forcing everybody onto one software platform I suspect they might be forcing you onto certain hardware.
I realise that compared to many in the business I only manage a small number of local machines directly, but about 20% of our network of Win 10 machines have failed to update to May 2020 build version 2004, I’m not talking about not yet updated but tried and failed, and it’s not always the older machines as most assume.
I’m big on OS variety, in that I have a mix of Windows, Linux and a small number of MacOS, but for any given OS I expect all my hardware to run the same OS version. When Apple forced me to vary OS across platforms by blocking certain machines from OS updates I dramatically cut down the number of MacOS systems I run. If MS end up heading in the same direction, I’ll take the same action without hesitation, and I’ll migrate a lot of machines to Linux.
I want local OS and applications, I don’t give a stuff what uniform cloud service they make available to replace my local resources.
I’ve no time available to manage a dozen variants of the same OS, two or three is enough.
Apple manages the whole software stack, including device drivers. I suppose they have sort of a deal in place that hardware vendors agree to provide driver updates for a certain period of time, after which Apple will phase out the systems. On Windows this decision-making is down to each independent hardware manufacturer and they will force your hand eventually anyway.
They don’t even necessarily need to do that. Most OSes that are not Linux provide a stable device driver ABI, so there is no need to keep drivers up-to-date just for them to continue working with OS updates.
anevilyak,
You are right, but sometimes it’s impossible to get that message through to a hardcore linux zealot. I love promoting FOSS and linux as alternatives to commercial platforms, but sometimes I wish there would be more compromises on pragmatic issues that have ironically resulted in linux being less accessible to the masses. Linux on ARM is not evolving the way it evolved on x86 and IMHO it has been for the worse. The ideological reasons behind linux not supporting a stable ABI are resulting in the proliferation of “linux” devices that are locked to a specific vendor kernel. Even these SBC ARM boards, which are cool as heck for DIY tinkerers, suffer from this problem.
Linus failed to address the tivoization of linux, and with the growth of mobile & IOTs it’s increasingly become the norm. It makes me wonder if something could have been done to change history or if this is the way it had to be.
Why are you updating so early? The first thing you learn in this industry is to never, ever install the latest for the sake of it. Unless 2004 has some must have for your organization, don’t install it.
I always wait 1 full year to install a feature update and have general updates on hold for 10 days after they are published. The only time I install them ASAP is when a critical security flaw is discovered. I have been doing this since the NT era days and the amount of horror histories you dodge is massive.
If you are only worried about new features sure I understand.
But the May 2020 build 2004 is a blend of new features and bug fixes. It’s common for some fixes to only be made available in a new build, and not retrospectively applied to earlier versions. I suppose it’s all related to dependencies.
For example, when we eventually got to 1903 or 1909, we found huge performance improvements in the enumeration of menus, fixes that are still not available in earlier versions.
Well, the “IT pros” will know how to avoid forced updates, as always. There’s no update without a running update and bits service, nuff said. What this will do is it will make those IT pros’ lives harder since they will have harder time to quickly explain average people how to “defer” borked updates (followed by hours of free time-waste by those IT pros), which we’ve seen enough already, but not the last of them.
Thom Holwerda,
I think what they were trying to say is “all your base are belong to us”, but instead it got lost in translation 🙂
Microsoft being, well, Microsoft. Same shenanigans as usual. Glad I moved to Linux a few years ago, though still obliged to use M$ crapware at work.
Windows 10 is a rolling release distro, aka something not even all hardened Linux veterans can swallow, much less ordinary users and businesses. I am actually afraid of going to Windows 10 when my Windows 8.1 installations stop receiving patches. And Desktop Linux is the usual Desktop Linux fare, bad power management, bad GPU drivers, reliance on OS repos to update third-party FOSS apps, gaps in premiums software support (MS Office, Photoshop etc) which mandates the use of a wonky compat layer (wine), bad multimonitor support, crap font handling, that.
It pains to say it, but MacOS looks like the best option, or simply bitting the bullet and going to Windows 10 and hope for the best.
I started with DOS, went through the Windows versions and all their quirks (best Windows version ever for me was 2000, very stable and lightweight). Also started using early Linux distros for university work, UN*X was expensive then, so I started with one of the early versions of Slackware (I think it was version 3). And in 2009 received a MacBook Pro model 5.1 as my work laptop and discovered OS X Snow Leopard, which was one of the greatest versions ever. Still have one of those MBP 5.1 and it can still unoffically be installed with Catalina with a patcher utility. So I still use all of these OSes.
Windows is hit and miss, some good versions (2000, XP SP3 and 7 SP1 with decent user interfaces, not Aero though, rest is crap), has improved in some respects (support for peripherals like Bluetooth devices and USB devices has improved immensely but still have some rough edges). Bu the problem with Windows (and most M$ software) is that M$ has good ideas, but bad implementations. And keep changing directions trying to be the next thing.
OS X (now macOS) is nice but Apple has become a luxury gadget maker. Has ‘consumerized’ macOS and the hardware too much, and the direction they started going since Jobs died bodes ill for the platform for power users and professionals. The hardware is not as good as it was and is much more expensive, and macOS ‘innovations’ seem to be confined to userland apps.
Linux and respective distros were always the underdogs in the desktop, and have sufffered somewhat of one of the same problems that UNI*X had, fragmentation. This has changed a bit with Canonical’s Ubuntu, which has brought a free distro that many adopted as their go-to distro and made some inroad into mainstream desktop, independently of any faults it has. I used Ubuntu, now I use Mint, Fedora and CentOS, and started using Arch and I am exploring other distros. The problem with Linux distros is hardware support, it has drivers for a lot of hardware but many times they are not optimized nor complete, and manufacturers many times will not help. The manufacturers work for the lucrative consumer/pro user market, which is WIndows based, and Linux kernel keeps playing catch up, many times reverse engineering the drivers and firmware. Only area that this doesnt happen is in professional/enterprise market in which Linux kernel is widely used and support is a must. Most problems with cooling, energy optimization, etc are the fault of the hardware manufacturers that only cater for Windows (see ACPI problems). Luckily this has changed and now Linux optimized, or at least compatible, hardware exists. I use an Acer TravelMate P2510-G2-M and it runs Fedora perfectly. Acer has or had a SKU with Linux from factory. All hardware is supported (Intel NICs, suspend works fine, hotkeys, etc) and it only crashed once in a year and half (and I think it was a Fedora package with a bug that was patched rapidly) and I do push it to the limits with KVM virtualization, sometimes overcommiting. I even managed to run a small oVirt farm (3 nodes) with hosted Management Engine. Not bad for a laptop. Runs cool, unless I load it fans are silent (as soon as I boot to Windows fans start spinning hard), has at least the same battery life than in Windows. So there is hardware with good support for Linux out there. And more is showing up everyday.
And all this confirms what I already commented here, that we will have hardware for Windows and hardware for Linux.
Windows Update can still be disabled completely in gpedit.msc right?
Uhhhhh, What?!
What does this mean? Well, for enterprise/corporate users, that depends on how good your IT department is. If you run a set of Windows machines and you don’t have updates controlled via WSUS and/or SCCM or another third-party solution for controlled roll-outs, shame on you. You’re asking for trouble. Who this is really going to hit are the home business users, i.e. independent content creators, freelance writers, etc or small businesses which do not have an IT staff. The basic outline of this change is that, unless you’re on a controlled update system such as mentioned above, you can no longer delay feature updates even if you have Windows 10 Pro. Mind you, this was an ability they gave users only a few versions back. God only knows what Microsoft are playing at this time, especially with several bug-ridden releases that you really didn’t want until a few cumulative updates came out to fix the worst of the problems. Not that this always fixes things either, see the 2004-06 cumulative update problem.
Is it even necessary? If so, how would business owners be able to benefit with it? I mean what would be the difference?
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Thank goodness I have scanned about this today.
https://online-application.org/