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Microsoft Announces 'Cumulative' Updates Will Become Mandatory For Windows 7 and 8.1 (microsoft.com)
Microsoft's now changing the way updates are delivered for Windows 7 and 8.1. Slashdot reader JustAnotherOldGuy writes: Microsoft's Senior Product Marketing Manager Nathan Mercer just announced that, "From October 2016 onwards, Windows will release a single Monthly Rollup that addresses both security issues and reliability issues in a single update... Each month's rollup will supersede the previous month's rollup, so there will always be only one update required for your Windows PCs to get current."
What this means is that individual patches will no longer be available after October 2016, and Windows 7 and Windows 8 users will now only have two choices: stop updating completely and leave your computers vulnerable to security holes, or accept everything single thing Microsoft sends you whether you want it or not.
Microsoft says their new approach "increases Windows operating system reliability, by eliminating update fragmentation and providing more proactive patches for known issues." They added that "Several update types aren't included in a rollup, such as those for Servicing Stack and Adobe Flash," and that "the .NET Framework will also follow the Monthly Rollup model." According to Microsoft's blog post, they'll also be releasing a monthly "security-only" update, but again, "individual patches will no longer be available".
What this means is that individual patches will no longer be available after October 2016, and Windows 7 and Windows 8 users will now only have two choices: stop updating completely and leave your computers vulnerable to security holes, or accept everything single thing Microsoft sends you whether you want it or not.
Microsoft says their new approach "increases Windows operating system reliability, by eliminating update fragmentation and providing more proactive patches for known issues." They added that "Several update types aren't included in a rollup, such as those for Servicing Stack and Adobe Flash," and that "the .NET Framework will also follow the Monthly Rollup model." According to Microsoft's blog post, they'll also be releasing a monthly "security-only" update, but again, "individual patches will no longer be available".
easy. thanks.
I guess they really didn't like people removing telemetry KB updates.
ksudoku is also fun
Microsoft has decided they own your computer, so (&*#^%$ em...
Been using Windows desktop since 3.1, mostly for work and gaming, helped move the games industry off DOS4GW to Windows a long time ago. And this sort of crap has moved me from Win 10 to dual boot Win10/Linux Mint, soon to remove the Win10 partition. I've moved almost my work onto Mint, only use Win10 when I have to run a Windows app, and the few left there I'll be exploring Wine or relocating into a Win10 VM. Steam provided great Linux versions of enough of my games I no longer need Windows, and my job is moving from C++ on Windows + Linux to JS on Azure & AWS, so no longer need Windows desktop for anything bur work corporate apps and have throwaway laptop for that. Good riddance.
Will be helping all interested friends make the same transition.
Great, now users can't block telemetry and other unwanted updates without disabling updates altogether.
Do they think that everyone is stupid?
I don't know if you've seen any national news int he past 6 months or so...
I don't respond to AC's.
Stop using Windows.
I'll be even safer on a Mac
People bought Windows 7/8/8.1 with certain expectations, including the ability to opt out of a given update.
Having a monthly roll-up is generally a good idea for most customers, at least in those months with no "bad patches" (grrr). After all, that's how Apple has been doing things for its iOS and MacOS (formerly MacOXS) updates for years. If I recall, that's how they handled updates for the original MacOS (1980s-1990s) as well, except that it wasn't on a monthly cycle.
However, to suddenly change the rules mid-stream is bad PR when it comes to business customers.
At the very least, they should have a registry-key or group-policy that you can put in to "go back to doing things the old way," at least for "Enterprise," "Pro," and "Ultimate" editions.
Oh, to make things worse, they didn't announce this until AFTER the free Windows 10 upgrade period is over. Users who kept Windows 7/8/8.1 specifically so they could manage updates individually are going to be calling "foul" over this.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I've been a Msft user since the earliest versions of MS-DOS, which means that I've put up with a lot of crap but kept on as things slowly improved. I have been burned by a number of updates over the years, so I install them manually after checking them out one by one. It's a pain, and some destructive stuff has slipped through from time to time, but I could always uninstall or fall back to a restore point if necessary. It would be nice if I could just trust Msft not to screw up my machine, but sadly, they haven't earned that trust. The choices are rather grim, as I don't want to forego security updates. I'm hoping there will be a large enough outcry that they back off before I have to move to another platform.
we have certain patches that cause issues on our systems and others that are fine?
Even if patches are all installed as a single block, there's going to be problems if users aren't remove individual KBs as needed.
Microsoft wants to make using older versions of Windows as annoying as possible for IT departments, to try to push us to move to Windows 10.
Corporate IT departments tend to be the biggest holdouts for moving to new versions of Windows. If a business is running fine on Windows 7, there is ZERO reason beyond security updates to move to Windows 10. Now they're giving us an artificial reason: If a rolled up update breaks something, we have to roll back the ENTIRE batch. Even any included security updates.
Microsoft wants their licensing revenue, and they want fewer versions of Windows to support. This is their play.
Microsoft says their new approach "increases Windows operating system's ability to send telemetry data by pushing such functionality even on those users who up to now were able to avoid them by not installing the corresponding patches."
FTFY
I really wonder if this would go well with major corporations since they usually pick only individual updates and exclude some that may cause interference with other systems.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
With the number of absolutely fucking BROKEN updates that brick machines that have been pushed down the pipes, this is just going to send machines into a fucking nightmarish hell of instability.
will be jumping of joy with this.
Lets break all our business applications due to an update that can't be tested before hand and that is mandatory.
Just great.
It would have been nice if the submitter and Slashdot editor would have taken the time to actually read/report the rest of the blog posting:
"Security-only updates
Also from October 2016 onwards, Windows will release a single Security-only update. This update collects all of the security patches for that month into a single update. Unlike the Monthly Rollup, the Security-only update will only include new security patches that are released for that month"
That sounds like a good solution for the rest of us who don't want all of the other "performance improvement" patches.
If your webcam driver relies on some undocumented quirk, and that changes, then the onus is on the webcam vendor to release a driver that follows better practices.
What if my webcam driver requires that the video be mpeg compressed?
I am literally amazed that you brought up webcams given that Microsoft literally just broke a million of them for windows 10 users several days ago
"His name was James Damore."
I absolutely understand why you'd say that. I've done that. However, the first thing the bad guys do when they want to break into a system is check for unpatched software. If you're running versions with known vulnerabilities, that makes things really easy for the bad guys.
So what can you do? For me, I use Linux and OS X. Yeah, if you're the type of person who enjoys fiddling with the registry, there's a learning curve. On the other hand, if you normally open browser when you sit down at your computer, Firefox, Chrome, and Opera are pretty much the same on any desktop OS.
Supported, but the normal way. Not this crap.
Well, I never cared too much about those. But I did disable all updates about a month ago on my Windows7 and my GF Windows10 laptops. Why? They repeatedly fail to installed. Causing a loop of "using 100% CPU for about an hour, reboot, fail to install, reboot to roll back, and then using 100% CPU again the next day trying to install the update again."
After repeatedly fixing those updates, I gave up and just disabled all updates. (which was easy on Windows 7 and a pain in the ass on Windows 10)
Why can't Microsoft just open source everything and play nice with the development community without making me cringe every time their update policy changes?
Because Microsoft is not in the business of giving anything away free (as in freedom or beer). The only reason it didn't cost you money to "upgrade" from win 7/8 to win10 is because win10 isn't the product, *you* are. Microsoft is in the business of wringing every spare dime out of every source they can get. Everything they do is with an eye towards that end. They gave up on selling an operating system to get money from you because as a target of advertising, you are worth far more to them than a measly hundred and fifty bucks every few years. The advertising revenue per person for targeted advertising like that provided by search and by those who control the OS, are worth several hundred dollars a year per computer in ad revenue.
TANSTAAFL
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
Thats all well and good that those who took advantage of the "free" Windows 10 are the "product" for MS to milk.. BUT.. Now that you actually have to *buy* Windows 10, these copies of Windows 10 are like the old versions, either you get it on a new machine or you buy a boxed retail disk or perhaps, for system builders, an OEM copy of it... People who have had to *buy* Windows 10 since the end of July have a seriously valid greivance against MS, and I'd be surprised if some very hungry lawfirm (or group of lawfirms) don't spin up a class action suit against MS for "double-dipping", namely datamining both "free" copies AND purchased copies... I'm sooo glad I gave up using MS products about 6 years ago, after using/supporting said products as a sysadmin for close to 20 years...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
I'm a Linux user and abuser since the 90s and I've watched all these shenanigans happen over the decades.
My smug cloud is even thicker than an Amiga user's from the 80s.
--
BMO
Germany might be a special case because of Störerhaftung, its presumption of liabilty of operators of open Wi-Fi hotspots for their users' infringing or otherwise illegal activity. In any other country, users who rely on UMTS, LTE, or satellite can take their laptops to a restaurant or public library to use unmetered Wi-Fi.
On the rare chance you happen to have a hardware configuration that doesn't work, there are already channels (through your MS support rep) to properly report it and get a fix.
Whatever they're paying you, it's not enough.
Take that however you wish.
Quoting the parent comment, with modifications: We've seen Microsoft's continuous stream of lies and incompetence... including a number of "bugs" and "mistakes" that appear deliberate.
An article I wrote last year, Microsoft Windows XP "end of life", makes the point that Microsoft fixed 319+828+459=1,606 bugs in Windows XP since Windows XP SP1 was released. Now Microsoft says Windows XP is still too buggy to use. We have 16 computers running Windows XP and haven't had any problems. And software does not have an "end of life", it continues to do what it always did.
Why do Adobe Flash and the Windows operating system have so many vulnerabilities? Do Adobe Systems and Microsoft sell vulnerabilities to secret government agencies and fix them when they are publicly discovered?
Ideas:
1) Use Autopatcher until Microsoft's begins its new system of hiding even more completely what it is doing with its updates.
2) Don't allow any Microsoft operating system to have a connection to the internet. Use Linux on a separate computer on a separate network for internet connections. Use Bluetooth to communicate between the Windows OS network and the Linux network.
For comparison, the Win 7 Pro machine I'm running this on has a little over 200 installed security updates (relative to Win 7 SP 1, I assume). It also has about 100 other updates, the overwhelming majority of which were installed by the supplier before delivery since I stopped installing non-security Windows updates by default long before this machine arrived.
I, too, would love to see a slipstreamed image that could be used to reinstall Windows 7 if necessary after this new silliness has taken over.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Actually, there does appear to be a somewhat reasonable third choice: Microsoft will apparently also be offering a security-only bundle each month, though it looks like you'll have to install it manually if you're not using WSUS as it won't be fetched via Windows Update. You still won't be able to cherry-pick individual updates, but at least it won't come with all the other stuff you probably don't want -- unless they decide to call some of that "security".
(There's a specific question about this, and a response from the Microsoft guy confirming that a monthly security bundle will be available for all of the different Windows 7 variants, in the questions below the blog post itself.)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I think you dropped your mic.
Then you raise a complaint through the official channels, and Microsoft fixes it... Which is exactly what's happening right now.
Does this mean that the webcam works, or doesnt work?
Its the later, right? Currently millions of webcams do not work anymore, yet they did less than 7 days ago.
Will raising a complain on official support channels retroactively give people this week/month/year of use of their hardware back?
Look, I have been accused of being a microsoft shill here because I have a rational bent on things. You however, don't have such a rational bent.
Forced updates, rollups, and so on, is exactly whats being discussed... these things have literally turned hundreds of millions of dollars of existing hardware into bricks. Go fuck yourself for defending it.
"His name was James Damore."
Not noted in the Slashdot entry is that after the October takeover of PC ownership via Windows Update is that Microsoft is going to backport the hotfixes into the mass monthly updates (and presumably remove those hotfixes from availability afterwards).
The consequence of this is that soon you will not be able to do a fresh install of 7 or 8.x and install only the hotfixes you want to get them up to (pre Oct 2016) as the old hot-fixes are going away too. If you're stuck using Windows better get your all your systems that you want to use imaged with all versions of pre Win 10 and updated (with the bad data monitoring hotfixes kept out) prior to the October updated. Windows 7 security updates were to go through 2020 and 8.1 through 2023.
It also appears there might be a method going forward for the true nutwads (like myself - I want the gaming - Linux partitions now though) and that will be to turn off Windows Update and use the Windows Update catalog site (a horrible MS site - at this point its a screen with a search window in it) to get security only updates...no details on how that will work, other than its mentioned in Microsoft's official announcement. For the general public though, Microsoft takes over control of their computers and will install user monitoring in the next months if they use Windows Update.
God I wish I could give it up. Every month it seems Microsoft/Windows are becoming more and more like a disease. I'm stuck with too much software that simply doesn't run on anything else.. A huge amount of money to throw away .. a choice between Linux and OSX in the near future maybe.. Used Linus years ago at uni - gritting my teeth already. :)
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..