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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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
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
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.
The only problem is that Microsoft has a very loose definition of what defines a "Security" update. They've already demonstrated that they will outright lie about an update to get people to install it (eg: Telemetry)
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.