this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2024
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Linux

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I just have to say, after having booted into Windows, that Linux is so much nicer than Windows when it comes to doing system "updates."

So, here I am, sitting in my chair for about 20 minutes looking at a mostly black screen and a highly dubious looking percentage number going up very slowly. It tells me that Windows is "updating" and that I should keep the computer turned on. Good thing I have the computer turned on or I wouldn't know that I shouldn't have it turned off, right?

Anyway, I start to think about how this experience goes in Linux. In my experience, I do "system" updates about once a month, and I can see each individual package being installed (if I glance away from my browser session, that is). In Windows, I have no choice but to sit here and wonder if the system will even work again.

Windows decides that it wants to update drivers, apparently (I honestly have no idea what it's doing, which is part of what pisses me off), because it reboots the computer. Then it reboots again. Then, eventually, everything goes back to the familiar Windows desktop. WTF?

How anyone could prefer Windows to Linux is truly a mystery to me.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

I've never, in multiple decades of using Windows, and thousands of updates, ever had an update installed and not had my computer work again. I suspect this is most people's experience, or they wouldn't use it.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you aren't trolling and instead congratulate you on being a lucky Windows user. That's unicorn-level awesome to me. As a former tech for public universities for 14 years, I can attest to the validity of OP's description.

Faculty and staff begged for methods to postpone updates that randomly introduced breaking changes, and its easy to recall the many times I was in a lecture hall rolling back audio drivers that broke the A/V setup after updates. Professors would be mid-lecture or mid-exam and have a video card driver update without warning and set their screen to mirror instead of extend, putting their notes or answer key up for the class to see and breaking their lesson plan. Disabled hardware would be updated and reenabled, breaking input or output devices.

I've certainly had updates (especially when they began including BIOS updates without asking) break system function irreversibly as well, like when whole campuses had a new TPM version (1.x > 2.x) pushed without warning, which caused them to fail to boot with the static image they were running. The state was slow to fully-implement WSUS, but got on the ball by 2018. That changed everything.

Suffice to say that while you my have gotten lucky and never experienced any downtime resulting from an unscheduled Windows update, others definitely have.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

I mean I had arch break grub with a update, which would really suck for a computer beginner. And I had a OpenWRT router boot loop after a update. On my windows machine the only updates that led to a boot problem were Nvidia ones.