They have.

Thing is, that's not solving the root problem though.

The real issue is Windows doesn't give users enough control, and still takes an inordinate amount of time to install the updates during the offline stage (shutdown/restart) on typical home PC hardware.

Merely shifting when updates occur won't help in the long-term, and might encourage Microsoft to keep ignoring the fundamental issues with Windows Update...

You can go to Group Policy and select the desired level of control. No problem with that whatsoever. These control points are not present in conventional UI nowadays, but they are there in Group Policies, and it's a piece of cake to tune them up to your preference.

If normal home Windows users are expected to edit the registry these days to manage basic settings the "Linux is too complicated for home users" argument seems to no longer be valid.

The Group Policy editor is a very straightforward GUI for quickly updating the registry for you though. It's no more complicated than using Windows Explorer to find your files.

Even editing the registry "directly" using regedit is very easy. Much easier than finding and editing config files on Linux because everything you need to edit can always be found in the same spot in the tree to the left, no matter what version of Windows you're running.

Meanwhile, your Linux desktop will have you entering arcane CLI commands to fix things after a bad update (which happened to me just last week on both of my Manjaro workstations).

My main job responsibility is research programming (Matlab/Python), so I consider myself fairly computer-literate, but about 10% of my time is spent as a sysadmin, and Group Policy is super confusing to me. I have no idea if what I put down is being applied or not, or where to look for something. It's far from straightforward. Maintaining our openSUSE Linux cluster is far more intuitive to me.

OK, I assume that I should restart or at least log out and back in when I change system settings.

Usually I'm following instructions that I found online and they tell you what to do there. I definitely don't go into Group Policy and edit things all willy-nilly.

This seems to be the case on many OSes. I was documenting my workstation setup recently and I'll share one entry here:

    ### Firefox opening to manjaro.org instead of new-tab

    - Look for settings in Firefox to disable this. No findeee!
    - Search the net to discover others talking about this. Many say just 
    uninstall `manjaro-browser-settings`.
    - Remove `manjaro-browser-settings`.
      - Failure: Firefox still behaves the same.
    - Decide to uninstall Firefox and reinstall it. However, I will install 
    Chrome first.
    - Use _Add/Remove Software_ app preferences to enable AUR repository, 
    then refresh databases.
    - Install Chrome from AUR. It works.
    - Uninstall Firefox and reinstall it.
      - Success: Firefox no longer opens to manjaro.org.
      - (There might have been a reboot somewhere in there - it doesn't 
    hurt to sprinkle them in randomly when
    practicing voodoo computing!)

Also it seems like with this OS, if I don't reboot after an update or changing certain settings - things start breaking.

Maybe one day, we'll have the perfect OS! But as far as I know it doesn't exist yet. :)

I realize this is a few days late, but does your Firefox not have this in the settings? https://imgur.com/a/1reMLvt

>I have no idea if what I put down is being applied or not

I'm not sure what you mean here. Obviously not all settings can be applied immediately, so I'm not sure how that's any different from modifying a random .conf file and not seeing the changes in real time.

> or where to look for something

google? At least all the setting are in one place and obeys some hierarchy.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure gpedit.msc is not available in the Home edition.

Home users can still use the registry editor.

Do Home users have group policy?

No, that requires Pro.

The group policy editor does not exist in the Home edition, but all the group policy editor does is modify the registry, so you can just make the registry modifications yourself using the registry editor which exists in all editions.

Using the policy editor is supported, while editing the registry is not, I'm afraid.

Having to go to group policy to do that, rather than the main UI, is a problem.

It's not going to work. My anecdote on this was my wife was working from home one day, she goes to her computer in the morning and it immediately starts a huge Windows update that takes over an hour (she doens't have the greatest machine) so she lost a whole hour of work.

The interesting thing is, normally that would be the "best" time to do the upgrade since she would normally be at work. But instead it was the worst time and no way to stop it.

I don't see why Microsoft is so against giving user some control of the process.

Updates always felt like a dominance gesture on windows. No smoth updates possible without yanking control away from the user.

They did and it became significantly better during the last year or so. No complaints at all, my coworkers and I are very pleased by this change.

A bonus point: select Semi-Annual update channel to get rid of a targeted, somewhat experimental updates.

Great idea. Rather than let the user, who knows more about their schedule, workflow, and needs, than anyone at Microsoft, determine when updates should be applied, we will instead use fancy Machine Learning to pick a time and force it upon them.