WTF problems is the system creating that require it to blindly reset the state of everything?
I get “we have detected a problem that may be resolved by us forgetting your Chrome tabs”, but doing it by default, just in case? Not acceptable in 2019. This is the sort of behaviour that makes people hate their computers.
But the truth is, these days, updates are rolling the dice with your computer. Major features are removed, and new bugs introduced. Not just with Windows 10, but with other software like Chrome.
Why not allow updates to be rolled back? Surely, if updates were so desirable, then nobody would want to undo them. It is because it would be admitting that some people might not want updates, among other reasons.
And so we live in a world where we can no longer rely on our computers. A setup that worked perfectly for you yesterday might be completely different when you wake up. Some bugs get fixed, new ones are introduced, except that I don't know what they are. It creates a kind of learned helplessness with computers.
"I'm not sure most programmers even know what makes things slow anymore" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De0Am_QcZiQ&t=629s
Warning: this hard locked my MBP. [snip] It was a pain in the ass to recover: my only option seemed to be to power down and power back up again, at which point OSX helpfully remembered the state my machine was in and dropped me back into the blacked-out display and maxed fan. Some combination of NVRAM reset, SPC reset and safe mode was required to get back in.
> MS hater of yesteryear kept blaming MS for the large number of unpatched and therefore insecure Windows systems
This logic means that when W7 is up, I'm a bad person for not just upgrading to W10 despite it offering a completely different experience and despite the fact that I owe MS no brand loyalty.
that's pretty short sighted. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19267411
That "Have you tried rebooting it?" is a thing at all is pretty bad but it's going to be so much worse when apps and OSes interact in a way that prevents clean reboot.
It also has no effect on whether FF's tabs come up next time. And if FF closes suddenly, you have a chance to discard your open tabs on start.
Explain to me how my statement is shortsighted again?
The OS handles its own state. That should be invisible to applications. Applications handle their own state. That should be invisible to the OS.
As I said, Firefox offers a choice to restore or discard tabs after a bad start or shutdown of the program.
If Chrome doesn't have good fail-safe mechanisms, I'm confused about what that has to do with Microsoft and what it has to do with me being shortsighted.
/I am/ a bit confused how it's so hard for you to understand the larger issue, especially since you know about two examples that already illustrated the point.
I'm a bit confused about why you don't perceive the above scenario as a software bug that needs to be fixed, specifically a programmer error dealing with compartmentalization.
Compounded further by another error when entering safe mode, as safe mode by design doesn't load any non-essential programs on start. Neither would Linux single-user mode without X. You should always be able to enter safe mode if a particular non-system program is messing things up. That's the point. Anything else is a bug and deviates from spec. If a programmer tried to argue with me that the spec was wrong in this case, they would be fired on the spot.
Firefox also doesn't auto restore tabs if it was shutdown improperly, so what you describe shouldn't happen. Has it ever happened to you? Or are you just arguing against a strawman?
For those cases, like in the examples, we need to keep the real hard reset that's been there the entire history of personal computing.
> Firefox also doesn't auto restore tabs if it was shutdown improperly
Okay how do you think that is implemented? There is no magic fairy dust that settles in the hard drive, it's code. Code with bugs, code with limitations. Safe mode is code, code with bugs and limitations. With your restore-reboot you now rely on two components to not fail in every single program that could cause something like the examples mentioned. Amazing design, let's make airplanes like that.
> they would be fired on the spot
spare me the power tripping garbage, instead try to show some comprehension
> strawman
You don't seem to know what a strawman is.
You don't design software on the premise that nothing works as intended and spec is thrown out of the window. If your software is full of bugs then you've failed on multiple levels and that's just one of them.
And in this case, the spec required by me and other consumers is that application and OS state remain completely independent.
Sure, but there's the question of regularity. For the most part, I can do live updates of every part of my linux system (including the kernel if livepatch is enabled). I only have to reboot if there's something like a major change to the init system. This leaves my server with the latest bits and no downtime in the past 5 months. On the other hand, my Windows machine tries to reboot at least monthly - and that's less often than I'm sure Microsoft would like.
1) Automatically install and schedule a reboot.
2) Download but let me choose to install.
3) Tell me there's updates but let me choose to download and install.
4) Don't check for updates.
My point is that Windows Desktop is not Windows Server so if you're going to compare a Linux Server to Windows, then you should compare it to the equivalent Server variant.
Lorkki's point was that this was not a thing that happened in the comment you replied to. Linux servers and desktops operate in the same way. The laptop I'm typing this on has 3 months uptime.
I simply said that wasn't a fair comparison because Windows Server doesn't require you to reboot.
You guys are arguing that Linux is Linux and I'm not disagreeing with you. Linux loads executable into memory before running them, Windows doesn't. So files on Linux can be updated/overwritten without reboot. That's a technical hurdle that can't easily be overcome.
The downside of that feature is that it's a hell of a lot easier to have a Linux system not come back up when it reboots because of drive failures or corruption. I've had that bite me in the ass a handful of times.
Regardless, my point was that if you need a system to have ridiculous uptime there is a version of Windows for that. I would argue that you absolutely do not need your laptop to be up for 3 months at a time.
* Trying to open a KDE app halfway through a KDE upgrade - crash.
* Trying to open a new tab in firefox after an update - crash.
* Updating an arch system - sound broke when rebooted, that was a frustrating holiday.
I usually reboot after an update if I see anything big like KDE/firefox/gnome/system being updated just in case.
Just when you need it the most and it has the lowest battery this crap will pop.
Minewhile some computers are stuck in update loop of failing to update, reverting, and retrying every god damn day again like anything will change. If you're too bad at ensuring updates work, dont force them down my throat the 100th time expecting something will change. I already accepted the fact your trash update will never work so can you please stop wasting my time?
Btw it's not hard to see that MS is working on making windows better even if it's hit and miss at the moment. Forcing reboots /is/ exactly that progress when it comes to windows security and I think it's quite unfair to not acknowledge the history that led to this.
Some people do critical work that can't be delayed.
This OS behavior wouldn't be acceptable in a computer running in a surgery office or a nuclear control room.
The problem is the OS is limiting its acceptable use cases to where the work isn't terribly important and can be interrupted without warning.
This is a technology problem with a technological solution.
These users would be wise to choose an OS that won't fail this way.
It’s like complaining that your game console can’t run hard-real-time factory control software. Nobody ever claimed it did, and you’d be personally irresponsible to even try. There are certifications hardware and software need to achieve to be used for such purposes. Use the certified software. (Windows Embedded Core, for example.)
It's what the "pro" version should be, but isn't.
How about running long compilations, video decoding, etc
Seems to me that Windows is unsuitable for real work.
That has to run (and postpone updates) more than a week to force reboot it.
And you’d normally do those things, these days, on a LTSB (i.e. workstation) or Server machine, which doesn’t have those problems.
Windows 10 “Pro” is Windows for “professionals” in non-computer-related professions, that need Microsoft to be their IT admin. If you are your own sysadmin, then you should be running LTSB and, well, sysadminning it.
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Windows-IT-Pro-Blog/L...
I shouldn’t have to buy 5 enterprise copies for ltsb to turn that shit back off.
Not a current Windows user but I used to work in a huge distributed system of Windows machines bringing in some hundreds of millions of revenue. Was that fake work? Seems condescending to both not know about automatically manage update settings and to bash 33.5% of the server market share.
I think this might be the result of laypeople bringing phone OS expectations over to a desktop OS.
For many phone apps you never have to worry about saving or closing them and there is little difference between opening an app that wasn't open before and resuming one that's not been on your screen for a while.
However, there are forms of work that are a mess when they are interrupted. Long rendering jobs for example.
I'm not lobbying for that, but I am lobbying for a proper hibernate feature (like Windows 7 had). Windows 10 has it, but it's hidden for some reason. Ubuntu had some version of it at some point, but it's disabled now and very hard to reenable and very unreliable. Unfortunately restoring everything takes up a huge chunk of my work time.
Reboot should still be a separate option.
Never before have I been so directly prevented from running networked services on my personal computer as Windows 10 has done. Gaming? Media? <name your normal service hosting anyone would want to do>? Nope. Rebooted.
MS tried it, users didnt do it, they got blamed so now it's mandatory. Natural progression.
I know what you're saying, and I hear you on the Windows getting blamed front, but if they can't do security patches without changing UI and restarting constantly, against user will, then it's no deal.
The need for rebooting is a design flaw, as is the need to manually save work.
Not leaving the house is a good survival tactic against the threat of being hit by bus. That's your argument?
Giving me option to perform updates whenever the hell I want, is a reasonable option we once had, it's been taken away... the hand of God reaches down and rips it out of your hands.
Please stop advocating that our choices be removed. Even something like a browser status bar was ripped out, first in Chrome, then FF. Not even an advanced choice to have it back. I prefer choice and control, I don't want a new mummy or daddy in form of tech giant or publishing and advertising giant or software vendor telling me how it is, or what I need.
Meh.
Funny enough, someone just posted in the GPU.js thread about how it hard locked his machine, and because the OS restored chrome and chrome restored his tabs after rebooting, he was forced to take extra measures to recover: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=19265107&goto=item%3Fi...
1. The easy stuff. Show a bright red warning that covers 10%, 20%, and progressively 50% of the primary display asking user to reboot at the next opportunity. However, don't reboot automatically unless the user opts into such behavior.
2. The hard stuff Take a hard look into what update requires reboot. Strip everything and hide almost all (I'm assuming we will need a kernel) those things from Windows home but keep them available using Windows features for a few years. Enterprise users might need backward compatibility but I think there is a lot of room to simplify Windows for the home.
According to the process flow diagram in the article, that won't happen unless you were working outside of your Active Hours and left your computer unattended for more than 15 minutes.
The Active Hours window can be an 18 hour window.
You don't work 24h and if you do, you shouldn't. If you still do well then make sure to check updates before your "shift"
Yeah,no. Even windows 10 dosen't require you to reboot it often - the machine i am writing from wasn't rebooted in two months(i update it when it is convenient for me, and when i am sure that update is 'safe' to install - updates that delete your files would be better left to another discussion) - it is usually running few spatial analyses nightly.
>You should never have hours worth of unsaved work open. NEVER. Don't blame windows or whatever, just dont ever do that or at least bear your shame quietly.
It isn't about having the work open, it is about system dictating WHEN you need to stop working and bloody update it.
We had a business presentation and our presentation laptop was running windows10 home - guess what happened?
Obviously you can delay update, or even prevent them for a while - but the prompt(which allows delaying by up to 15minutes, blocking updates takes place in control panel if i recall right) didn't show while presentation was in fullscreen - and the update took 1.5 hours.
Updating at reboot is fine, but users must have an option to NOT update at the next reboot(even if it is annoying as hell for user) - sometimes it is necessary - and remember that software serves the users, not the other way around.
I agree that restoring open apps on reboot is a horrible practice in general, but when updating the OS without any user interaction - it is a must if you cannot update without rebooting the OS.
What people are angry about isn't the idea that windows closes everything, or updates itself, but that they aren't in control of their computers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwQpPqPKbAw
Bad PR is more damaging to market share than the 1% bitching about being treated like Cattle.
If they give users the ability to disable security and update functionality then users will disable them OR bad actors will trick them into disabling them.
You're behavior is not unlike an Anti-Vaxxer's.
Why is it unreasonable that for this one time thing, the OS gets out of the way, and allows me to make a single exception?
When my cousin was attending Ringling back in the early 2000s everyone needed Workstation or 2000 to run Renderman and they had setup the Renderman nodes on all of their personal workstations so that when anyone of them had a big job to render they could have the whole farm do it.
IMO, user should always have a choice to make final decision. Don't you want to restart or event download updates? You maybe like viruses or whatever reason, made you do so. Fine I don't care, it was your decision, and I (system) will respect that. I can only warn you, that your system might be at a risk.
> You should never have hours worth of unsaved work open. NEVER.
This is stupid either. I can have unsaved work. It's risky, but again it was my choice. Previous Windows, which didn't restart willy nilly, didn't suffer with this problem as much as W10. So this is definitely regression in UX.
If they need to update every other day then so be it, but do it without offloading the work of what should be modern OS functionality onto end users who now have to clean up your mess.
Linux has a handy app called "needrestart". After you've updated it checks what needs restarting and offers to do it. If the kernel is updated then it will tell you to reboot. Some distros have live kernel patching which is as nutty as it sounds but seems to work. You only really have to reboot if the kernel is upgraded but to be honest, its a good idea to put in a reboot on a regular basis anyway and design your systems with some sort of redundancy to cope.
In my experience, only Gentoo (and derivatives and the like) can take longer than Windows for updating. Bear in mind they compile packages from source code. Getting a LibreOffice and Firefox and a Window Manager (say Gnome or KDE) update at the same time is a recipe for a very hot lap.
But I have not had a single unexpected reboot on my win10 install. It's because I always update at the next time of convinience. Updating is required maintenance of any software system and you can't afford to ignore it. I also see some consequences of questionable behavior blamed on windows. You should never have hours worth of unsaved work open. NEVER. Don't blame windows or whatever, just dont ever do that or at least bear your shame quietly.
Also, please for the love of god, stop lobbying for OSes to faithfully restore your open apps on reboot. The only way to solve a lot of problems is to be able to really reset the state of everything which is not worth trading for your ability to better compulisvely hoard chrome tabs. That shit is not healthy btw.
Finally, reboots are necessary on all major operating systems, even linux. Remember Windows user used to be free to apply updates when they wanted but you, yes you, MS hater of yesteryear kept blaming MS for the large number of unpatched and therefore insecure Windows systems. So they don't give users the freedom to postpone indefinitely and of course it's also not right. So what can they do?