Stealthy Windows Update Raises Serious Concerns

UniversalVM writes "What is the single biggest issue that bothers open source advocates about proprietary software? It is probably the ability of the vendor to pull stunts like Microsoft's recent stealth software update and subsequent downplaying of any concerns. Their weak explanation seems to be a great exercise in circular logic: 'Had we failed to update the service automatically, users would not have been able to successfully check for updates and, in turn, users would not have had updates installed automatically or received expected notifications.' News.com is reporting that all of the updated files on both XP and Vista appears to be in windows update itself. This is information that was independently uncovered by users and still not released by Microsoft."

Comments

Proprietary File Formats

[the eric conspiracy]

By far the most worrisome thing to me about closed source software is proprietary file formats. Almost always the data is worth far more than the software, and when vendors try to lock up the data they are making a grab right for the testicles.

This is ultimately why OOXML is such a big deal, and why I would much rather has open source.

Re:So Windows Update Has Problems

[apoc.famine]

While it's a slightly advanced procedure, I'd highly recommend doing the following:

1a) Pick a hosed windows machine, or one with a empty hard drive to play around with. Linux takes all of 20 minutes to install now, (well, if you aren't installing gentoo) so it's worth beating through an install or two and getting a feel for it. If you mess it up, it's a snap to do it over. Slightly harder if it's on your precious windows box with your precious data. (Re)installing an OS always comes with risk if you have data somewhere else on the box that you're trying to keep.

1b) When installing linux, create an additional partition for your /home directory. The size you need will depend on if you're keeping just desktop and other settings there, or if you're installing games and movies to it. You can probably get away with just 0.5-1gb if you're not planning on installing games or piling in movies/music. If you are, they should be about the same size as in windows and you can budget your space appropriately.

2a) Ubuntu's installer lets you choose where to install bits of it - it can be somewhat confusing, but if you read and think, (and go back and redo it a few times after you mess it up) you should be able to get the hang of it. The nice thing is that after you set everything up, it shows you what it's going to do, and asks "are you really sure you want me to do this?"

2b) Tell it to install /home on the additional partition you made. All application settings are stored here, which means if you ever DO have problems with the actual install, you can reinstall the OS (or even a different linux OS!) and keep all your settings. Games installed here will either still work, or will still work with a minor bit of tweaking.

Most of my current settings and games have been carried over from a Gentoo install..3...4 years ago? They've gone through Gentoo on two different chipsets and (k)ubuntu on two different chipsets, on two different machines, with two sets of hardware each. For all that, I've installed Doom3 and Quake4 once apiece, kept all my IM settings/logs/contacts, browser prefs and bookmarks, etc. It's very much worth learning how to set up your /home directory on a separate partition, and it's one area in which linux is far ahead of windows in terms of "kindness to the end user".