This is definitely a problem especially considering that the shotgun approach to some Windows updates actually hurt the performance of some machines, even breaking Windows on occasion [0]. However, in fairness I would say that I've spent just as much or more time fixing rolling release issues on Arch/Manjaro, or troubleshooting the package stopping me from sudo apt upgrade. The worst experience for me was having to reformat after the update from Ubuntu 14.04 crashed.
What annoys me most about Microsoft's overarching paternalistic philosophy is is how creepy their telemetry initiatives are. Granted plenty of companies do this now, for the same profit-driven motivations, but Microsoft goes above and beyond in terms of disabling or even ignoring opt out options [1]. I've found the Winaero blog [2] to be a good source of tools to stop some of the Windows telemetry shenanigans.
[0]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2019/05/19/microsof...
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/a4lpg0/windows_1...
[2]: https://winaero.com/
That doesn't even matter much to me. Obviously, less time spent is better, but what really matters is the timing.
When I have to spend time upgrading my linux box, I have set time aside. I decide that I have a bit of time, and if it turns out to be a bigger job than expected, I can decide to abort and continue some other time.
On Windows the upgrade is always inconvenient, because you have no way of controlling it. Microsoft decides when the best time for you to upgrade is, and once it starts you have no means of punting on it.
Although the telemetry is certainly a problem too.
That too. When I update MacPorts, it can, sometimes, take ages. I don't care - I just continue working.
True, very good point in favor of user control. Linux has the added benefit of teaching the discipline and foresight to understand that "Hey... maybe I shouldn't run sudo pacman -Syu and reboot until I have some time set aside". Though in recent years I've found Arch to be way more stable with very few updates causing major problems.
Can confirm. I've had the same Arch install for nearly 6 years now. I've borked it only once in that time, and that one was my fault for not reading the news first. Fixed it in < 5 minutes.
And I've made considerable changes in that time, including moving the entire installation from one hard disk to another.
Fantastic - so if any of the fstab entries are missing, the entire system effectively bricks itself. The only way to fix it was to remove the SD card, put it in another machine, and manually remove the offending entries from the fstab file. Fantastic. I Don't think I have ever managed to get windows to self-brick itself with something so simple.
--no-preserve-root
do not treat '/' specially
--preserve-root
do not remove '/' (default)
Mind that if your rm comes from elsewhere (say, Busybox), it may not have that protection.
Very careful use of rm as root is an excellent habit to cultivate.
As are backups.
If you can't properly start the OS, that's correct behavior. You don't want the OS to start writing things to /var when it can't mount the filesystem that should be mounted to /var.
In any case, the fix with an RPi is easy - pop out the microSD, mount it on the other computer and fix whatever is broken (which should be in the logs). If the RPi is the only computer, put a microSD with a plain install of the OS, mount the other microSD through an USB dongle and fix it the same way you'd do with a laptop.
And no, I'm sorry but I hate the argument of "you should have known better" - the system first and foremost shouldn't have defaults set up in such a way that not only the SSH server doesn't come up in case of an issue during boot, but the local console is entirely disabled for any access. That's a crazy default.
But not all annoyances are created equal
I find the same thing with electric cars. Eight hours to charge when I've spent two decades filling in minutes is absurd.
The thing that annoys me most on Windows is Windows itself. After using Linuxes for almost two decades now, the notion of the OS taking tens of minutes to self update when all I wanted was to quickly reboot it is unbearable.
> I don't know how/if they're going to handle freeing memory again -- here the NT kernel really needs to communicate with the Linux kernel
Usually "free" memory only happens when a Linux machine starts. During normal usage most of the memory is being used to cache things and, when some large app frees its own memory (such as when Slack quits) it'll eventually be used for other things.
Not sure how that would work. Memory doesn't stay unused in Linux for long - whatever programs free will end up being used to cache information that's slow to access.