Comment by breakingcups | Hacker News Reader

Comment by breakingcups | Hacker News Reader

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The user-hostileness of Windows Update astounds me. This week I had a notification about updates. I still had many tabs and a few editors with (unsaved) content. I put my computer to sleep to continue the text day, figuring I'll do the update then.

Nope. Microsoft in all its arrogance decides that no user can be trusted to make proper decisions about their own hardware. It set a wake timer, booted up my PC in the middle of the night and rebooted it (killing all my processes, wiping out my work) to install its update. It's unforgiveable. There's no way to turn just the forced reboot feature off permanently. The only thing you can do is suspend updates for a bit, temporarily.

I own my hardware, I want to own my software. I'm sick of this "OS as a service" turn Windows 10 has taken.

I used to exclusively use Linux desktops but got back into games.

However, this combined with the deceptive Microsoft account bullshit when installing makes me think I should make the switch back again.

Using Group Policy you can set Windows to download but not install updates. [0]

Setting this, I have never had an unexpected restart. Please keep in mind that future Windows updates may adjust this setting. I have had to re-apply the policy at least once.

I’ve also had issues with wake timers which have needed a combination of settings to fix.

Personally, I have moved away from Windows for every device I have excluding a dedicated gaming PC. I agree that this is hostile behavior and is completely unacceptable.

[0] The group policy is located at

  Computer Configuration\ Policies\ Administrative Templates\ Windows Components\ Windows Update

and is called “Configure Automatic Updates”. Enable it and select “3 - Auto download and notify for install”

> Please keep in mind that future Windows updates may adjust this setting.

This is a big problem. Changing settings or even re-installing junk that you worked hard to remove.

An even bigger problem is that microsoft can just simply disable this setting whenever they want in the future.

Yeah, you need to be very cautious with megacorp software these days. Disable internet access before putting your laptop to sleep or better don't even give it access to the entire internet in the first place, as the OS, the drivers, everything working in background will abuse it.

Although if you just want to control updates wumgr [1] still works, check it out. I use windows laptop pretty rarely, like a few times per year maybe and it helps a lot.

[1] https://github.com/DavidXanatos/wumgr

> I used to exclusively use Linux desktops but got back into games.

If you mostly play singleplayer games, WINE/lutris/Proton have all gotten pretty good. If you play games with anti-cheat, there's no escaping Windows though.

You may have luck with a GPU passthrough actually, if you've got the hardware.

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