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Windows 10 Updates Are About To Get a Lot Smaller To Download as Microsoft Switches To Differential Patching (theverge.com)
Microsoft currently distributes major Windows 10 updates -- Anniversary Update, for instance -- as essentially full operating system installs, going as much 4GB in size. But that is changing starting today (for some users). From an article on The Verge: Microsoft has been promising smaller updates to Windows 10, through various methods, for what feels like years, but the company is now starting to test a new Unified Update Platform (UUP) that will make a big difference. "One of the biggest community and customer benefits of UUP is the reduction you'll see in download size on PCs," explains Bill Karagounis, a Windows program manager. "We have converged technologies in our build and publishing systems to enable differential downloads for all devices built on the Mobile and PC OS." Differential downloads only include the changes that have been pushed out since you last updated a Windows 10 PC. This new change will debut with the Windows 10 Creators Update that's expected to arrive in March, but Windows Insiders can start testing the technology in today's latest build update for mobile devices. Microsoft will start rolling this out to PC builds later this year, alongside HoloLens devices. Xbox One devices running Windows 10 won't benefit from UUP as Microsoft distributes operating system updates to consoles using different methods.
I thought Microsoft got rid of program manager 20 years ago.
What a relief, a proper troll that's been missing from /. for too long.
Welcome back!
Bet you $50 MS fucks up the first patch royally leading to a much larger than average patch to hot-fix the differential issue.
I recently helped a friend who kept having Windows 10 chew through all his Verizon bandwidth. They live in a rural area and are unable to get DSL, so they're on Verizon's 5gig a month plan. The Anniversary update along with all the live tiles, Update sharing and telemetry information sharing, completely wiped out their monthly bandwidth limit.
I turned on the metering controls to help with that, but this is even better.
So lets get this right, it's 2016 and instead of downloading complete replacements for the OS at 4GB a piece, we're saving a few hundred meg? Shouldn't these be even smaller? like individual files and executables? maybe even diffs of those files? Is there really any reason they couldn't adopt a mechanism like deltarpm to push updates?
I'm sure those ISP's with datacaps are foaming at the mouth that those caps are gonna be slightly harder to hit now...
This is different how from analyzing your computer against a list of patches & replacements, then downloading and installing only the ones needed ... as done in all versions of Windows before 10? Except that as a user you have no control over the results and the process - must accept what's given.
© Starcraft Blizzard
...that they use bsdiff.
OH GAWD
I can't wait to see how they manage to fuck this one up.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Congratulations on Windows Update finally making it to the 1980s.
It took MS so many years to implement an however obvious differential patching, that says a lot about the code modularity and team management. One could bet and expect the next updates to be problematic.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
That happened to me also, but when I installed Win 7, it killed my cat, so now I'm on Win 3.1 again. It seems safe, but I think it's eying my gold fish. :(
Windows 10 uses a cumulative patching system. To update a Windows 10 out-of-the-box install to this month's updates you only need this month's update, not every single update that has been released since that CD was made. That's a huge change from previous versions.
The downside of this is that cumulative updates have gotten much larger over time. October's update clicked in at around a gig. That is a lot of data to move around on a network. With this change the computer only pulls down the differences between the last time it patched and today. The hope is that this will take some of the pain out of patching.
Full disclosure, I work for Microsoft in an unrelated group.
Since Windows is a collection of bajillion files, it seems logical that security and bug fixes would only have to replace files changed, yet upgrade downloads were gigantic, approaching the size of an entire OS.
Now it appears MS is confessing that they have been doing it the blunt low-brow way: the entire OS, or something close, came down for every upgrade all this time.
Imagine the collective bandwidth wasted on all that: it alone may have increased Earth's temperature by a degree or two. Does MS own bikini stock or something? I would guestimate Windows updates have made up between 10 to 40 percent of all Internet traffic. Seems a Yuuuuge MS blunder. Am I missing something?
Table-ized A.I.
They really messed it up Windows Update. It has ruined my 3D prints, and has kept me from leaving places with my laptop.
Taking away the user's ability to delay updates, was bull$hit.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Some intern spent 5 minutes changing this one command, saving the whole world (including his employer) a few billion dollars over the next few years.
And that intern's name was .. Donald Trump 2020!
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
...is the joy you get from scrubbing the filthy thing off your computer once and for all.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Most likey not. Bloat follows average storage space, and what was bloat 10 years ago fits into a tiny corner today. This applies to HDD (and now SSD), and their parallels in RAM use and CPU bandwidth.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
You mean something like this ?
For Joe Six pack the appstore is there for simplicity too
http://saveie6.com/
I had hope when I saw the app store at first. Finally, it would be possible to install apps from a controlled source and avoid the crazyness of installing things you download manually on the internet. But ... MS did it wrong again.
Linux updates usually take less than a minute, sometimes slightly more. And they don't even use diffs. How come MS never managed to update any file without reindexing your whole hard drive ? (or at least that's the impression I have when I see windows updates)
what this really means is you will not be able to cache updates via HTTP
honestly I do not know why they have NOT used plain HTTP to download the objects (fall back to https/p2p if needed and have them as options) this would make caches so much faster
(yes verify those objects via cryptographic hash obtained via DANE and TLS )
honestly why cant Microsoft , Apple and Linux/BSD all agree on the transport mechanism (I propose HTTP) this would make life and speed better for everyone
regards
John Jones
Bloat follows average storage space, and what was bloat 10 years ago fits into a tiny corner today.
SSDs make storage bloat slightly more relevant, as does imposition of monthly data transfer quotas on rural or mobile Internet connections. Or how much has the price per gigabyte for satellite or cellular data transfer allowance dropped over the past several years?
The other option, as several Slashdot users have recommended, is to move to an area where DSL, cable, or fiber is offered:
I have a couple of smaller, cheaper laptops with Windows 10 on that keep nagging to apply a pending update.
They are only a few months old.
But telling them to proceed just results in them downloading about 5 gigs data, and then giving up because they don't have room on their small SSDs.
This has happened several times, and is a pretty big waste of bandwidth.
We have put hardly any non-OS data on them. They just can't handle the updates, out of the box.
Does this chance mean they might be able to finally update?
Did MS finally shell out for a license for RTPatch?! That only took 25 years.
Another slashvertisement...
You mean after 40 years of OS updates they are only now doing this?!?!?!
I always wondered why Windows updates were so huge and bloated, and now I know.
Are you seriously suggesting that the proper "fix' for Microsoft removing the option to schedule update downloads is to move to another location to change ISPs?
It is not a proper fix. But in the long run, there is no truly proper fix for proprietary software other than uninstallation. Switching to an ISP with at least a double digit cap works around not only Microsoft's squandering of bandwidth but also that of websites that have both video ads and anti-adblock.
Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?
Apparently a dozen other users of Slashdot don't.
Oh almighty have mercy upon us common folk, Microsoft is actually trying to reduce the size of something. I don't believe it until I see it. I still remember the XP installations that consumed just up to about 500 MB of space and if that's not enough for an operating system then banana it.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
A couple of months ago I'd gotten sufficiently fed up with Android that, when my Android tablet decided to reset itself again, a week or so before I was going on a trip, at the same time that Fry's had an Ematic Win10 tablet on sale, that I'd give Windows tablets a chance. The one I bought had 32GB of flash (plus a microSD card slot), and had 15.9GB of that free. I ran Windows Update, which told me that Anniversary Update was available and needed 16GB of free space; turns out that doesn't mean 15.9, nor 16, nor 16 with an empty 64GB SD card - I had to drag&drop enough different things over to the SD card to get about 18-19GB free on the built-in to get the update to run. But once it had enough space it ran cleanly.
The latest outrage from MS is that the email account I registered it with had the form "username+tag@domain.com", and MS has decided that to protect me from losing access to the account if I forget the password, they need to VERIFY that by sending it an email, which never arrives because they're confused by the "+tag" in the name field, so when I tried to add a different email by answering a bunch of bogus security questions with the same answers as last time, they sent the "VERIFICATION" email to the new address, I clicked on it, and the first thing it does is demand that I re-verify it by having them send a code to the old address. I have not given them a phone number to call, since I have no interest in giving them my real information; I'm tempted to borrow a burner for that, or see if they can send the code by audio to a VOIP system or something.
(That's not even counting that Windows 10 tablet mode is pretty lame, and works much better with a keyboard, and the nice ergonomically designed keyboard that came with the tablet died after about a month, but that's more a symptom of what you get for $70 on sale.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks