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Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

blogs.windows.com

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Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#231

Post by realo »

glimshe wrote: post #152

Sweet Jesus, when are these guys going to understand that I want to be able to turn off automatic updates completely and forever . I'm fine if my computer melts and explodes if I didn't get the update, but let me do it on my own schedule permanently!

I understand your point and motivation completely. And I agree...

However in today's world if you expose an unpatched "anything" to the internet then it is very possible that it will be discovered and eventually used to (silently) do things you don't want. Think DDOS farms, illegal software distribution etc...

What is the middle ground? I don't think there is one. We need to have reliable, automatically updated OSes which don't suck and , much more importantly, run the applications we need.

That is definitely NOT Windows.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#232

Post by ninjagoo »

cfiggers wrote: post #107
mdavid626 wrote: post #91

I literraly can’t name one feature since Windows 7 what was worth it, even on the contrary: every update made the system worse. I had to restore Notepad, Calculator and Paint from Windows 7. What the hell Microsoft?

On Windows 11, when you reconnect to a monitor or set of monitors that you've connected to before, it will automatically return your open windows to the layout across those monitors that you had when you last disconnected (assuming those windows are still open). This is extremely nice and saves me time on a literally (not figuratively) daily basis, to the point that I generally forget that it hasn't always worked tha…

> This is extremely nice

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Bird_in_a_Gilded_Cage

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#234

Post by ninjagoo »

grassfedgeek wrote: post #201

With Windows Update what I really want is control over reboot. Don't automatically reboot, instead let me save documents, close applications and reboot manually. "Pausing" updates doesn't do that, and could be dangerous as urgent security updates are delayed. With AI features, the most annoying thing has to be the Copilot key on my laptop keyboard. If you accidentally hit it it opens a Copilot window, interrupting yo…

> The Settings app for this key only allow you to specify whether it activates search or copilot, it doesn't let you turn it off.

That's because it's not your computer, it is Microsoft's ;-)

Seriously, though, there will be quirks like with almost any OS. OS devs make choices that abstract some of the complexity in order to make it useful for a broad audience.

With Linux or the BSDs, you have the freedom to take it to any level of detail or customization that you wish to, with all that entails being outside of an externally maintained OS. Ask me how I know :-)

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#235

Post by ninjagoo »

ramijames wrote: post #209

There's no amount of progress that will make me go back to Windows. 1. Microsoft accounts. No. 2. Ads in my OS. No. 3. Slow copying of files. No. 4. A maddening mix of UI/UX paradigms and implementations. No. 5. AI deeply embedded in my OS. No. I don't know wtf their design team is doing.

> I don't know wtf their design team is doing.

They're doing what management/business-strategy is asking them to do.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#237

Post by cosmic_cheese »

cfiggers wrote: post #134
PeterStuer wrote: post #40

What people realy want: as little OS as possible to let them run just the things on their computer they want to run. What Microsoft wants: Windows as their straightjacket into the Microsoft services as that is where the revenue is. Why Windows got this bad: incentives and coercion placed on the teams to show uptake on the services no matter what leading to perversion in tactics and complete alienation of the user bas…

> What people realy want: as little OS as possible I see what you're saying but that isn't how I think about it. I'm happy to have as "much" OS as is useful and adds value, convenience, or user experience for me . Example: I quite like Windows Hello. Facial recognition is the smoothest, most pleasant form of biometric authentication available on a laptop, and it's nice to be able to use it anywhere throughout the who…

From my point of view, the ideal here is something like pre-OS-X Mac OS, where the OS itself was barely even an OS and more just a substrate just complete enough to run the desktop and third party applications on.

The majority of bells and whistles (which Windows Hello falls under) were not baked into the OS, but instead implemented as system extensions that the user could disable and prevent from loading into memory at will.

This meant that even with the last release of Classic Mac OS (9.2.x), if you disabled all extensions you got a desktop reminiscent of the 1985 System 1 except with color and modern resolution support.

I think it should be more of a goal for desktop OSes to try to emulate this. If a Windows user wants a quiet no-frills Win2000 like experience except with choice exceptions like Hello, they should be able to have that without having to resort to messy hacks that impact stability and undo themselves if you update.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#238

Post by heresie-dabord »

fancyfredbot wrote: post #94
mdavid626 wrote: post #91

I literraly can’t name one feature since Windows 7 what was worth it, even on the contrary: every update made the system worse. I had to restore Notepad, Calculator and Paint from Windows 7. What the hell Microsoft?

WSL is a great feature and was a part of Windows 10.

For all its problems, WSL is the single greatest power feature that Windows has ever had.

Debian itself is a superpower.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#239

Post by frm88 »

torben-friis wrote: post #56

This reads... Weird? As in, I know it's marketing speech but expressions seem misused and ideas don't follow from each other: >You decide when updates happen, not the other way around. Not... the other way around? Updates decide when I happen? >Last month we said we would reduce where Copilot shows up across Windows, focusing on bringing AI where it’s most valuable. [...] in Notepad, we’ve replaced the generic Copilo…

My sentiments exactly when reading that - I had to read the first one twice to verify what it said.
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