Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Regular Windows 10 Users Who Manually Look For Updates May End Up Downloading Beta Code, Microsoft Says (techspot.com)

Posted by msmash on from the for-the-record dept.

In addition to relying on Windows Insiders, employees, and willing participants for testing updates, Microsoft is pushing patches before they are known to be stable to regular users too if they opt to click the "check for updates" button on their own, the company said. From a report: In a blog post by Michael Fortin, Corporate Vice President for Windows, it is made clear that home users are intentionally being given updates that are not necessarily ready for deployment. Many power users are familiar with Patch Tuesday. On the second Tuesday of each month, Microsoft pushes out a batch of updates at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time on this day containing security fixes, bug patches, and other non-security fixes. Updates pushed out as part of Patch Tuesday are known as "B" release since it happens during the second week of the month.

During the third and fourth weeks of the month are where things begin to get murky. Microsoft's "C" and "D" releases are considered previews for commercial customers and power users. No security fixes are a part of these updates, but for good reasoning. Microsoft has come out to directly say that some users are the guinea pigs for everyone else. In some fairness to Microsoft, C and D updates are typically only applied when a user manually checks for updates by clicking the button buried within Settings. However, if end users really wanted to be a part of testing the latest features, the Windows Insider Program is designed exactly for that purpose. Further reading: Windows 10's 'Check for updates' button may download beta code.

8 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. JFC... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How pathetic. Give it up and switch to Linux.

  2. Microsoft wants Windows consumer customers ... by QuietLagoon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...to go away. There is no other explanation.

    1. Re:Microsoft wants Windows consumer customers ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Microsoft wants Windows consumer customers ...to go away. There is no other explanation.

      They aren't treating their enterprise customers all that well either, just different forms of abuse.

      All previous client versions of Windows had the Professional edition equal to Enterprise in all but the licensing component, otherwise they were the same.
      With 10, Professional is closer in features to the Home edition and lacks much of what one expects from a domain attached system and group policy, countless policies that no longer work in any edition except Enterprise.

      Then there is the licensing. Holy fuck.
      Windows Server is now licensed per core available, and has a minimum purchase of 2 CPUs and 16 core. That isn't 16 core per CPU either, it's 16 total.

      So 2 CPUs at 24 core each? You need to purchase 4 licenses at full windows server pricing.
      4 CPUs at 12 core each? That's 8 copies of windows you buy for that one installation.

      Plus CALs

      Want to get that Enterprise license for Windows 10 to use with that fancy server? That's a minimum 10 client license purchase.

      So 4 copies of windows server and 10 copies of windows 10, added to $180 per user, paid every year.

      Want to expand to two physical server systems? Basically double that.
      8 copies of windows server, $180 per user per server, and your 10 copies of Windows 10 still even if you went from 1 to 2 PCs.

      That enterprise licensing code I mentioned? It's called KMS, and you don't enter keys or anything like that.
      You are required to run (and license!) a dedicated KMS server on your domain. Any new OS gets turned up, it requests a license from that server, which sends the request to Microsoft, and it goes on your next months bill pro-rated of course.
      It sounds easier than managing license keys, and yea it certainly is, but requires opening a line of credit with Microsoft and sending in about the same amount of corporation registration paperwork as it takes to get a damn EV certificate from godaddy :P

      Oh, and if you don't go the enterprise edition and KMS license route and just stick with Professional and "make due", well then we don't get any more control over windows updates than you do at home.

    2. Re:Microsoft wants Windows consumer customers ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      The parent post has major factual errors. As much as I would also deride Microsoft's behaviours as of late, they're not quite as horrifyingly bad as listed above. To address:

      -Windows client has had versions above Professional since Vista over 10 years ago. These versions have always had extra capabilities such as DirectAccess VPN and BitLocker encryption. Enterprise/Ultimate features have occasionally drifted down to Professional over the releases since.

      -Featureset in Professional is still far above Home, although Professional does share a lot of the "crap" that comes on a base install. Group Policy and its associated automation tools still provide all that is needed to disable or remove such unwanted features from Pro. The Enterprise-only policies are very much countable, and constitute a very small set of the policy template set (low single-digit percentage by quantity and any fairly weighted importance metric).

      -Per-core licensing in Windows Server is a clusterfuck. No disagreement there. It's not exactly as you describe in the scenarios listed, but actually worse in a high-availability/clustered environment. The licensing model falls apart badly with how CPUs are scaling out in core counts (ie: Epyc/Rome 64-core single socket), and was obviously implemented as either a short-sighted cash grab, or a "fuck you, buy Azure" statement.

      -CALs stink, but they're good for the whole environment for the CAL version and below. Server 2019 CALs are good for as many Server 2019 and below instances as the company has.

      -KMS licensing has never required a dedicated server. It's a very lightweight role and can even run on a desktop (Windows Professional) if so chosen. Devices bound to KMS check in regularly with the KMS server, and self-deactivate if it can't be reached for a few months. Deactivated Office goes read-only, while deactivated Windows just nags for activation and locks out the controls for a few personal settings like the wallpaper. KMS is also deprecated in favour of Active Directory-Based Activation for Windows 8/Office 2013 and up. No special server or fancy DNS SRV records needed for ADBA, just a normal domain controller, plop in your license keys, and they'll be found by all systems on the domain. KMS/ADBA has also always used regular 25-character keys, although they did change it a couple years back that you have to request them personally whereas they used to be handed out automatically alongside MAK keys in the VLSC. A KMS server does require activation when registering new licenses, but can run fully isolated afterwards and will happily hand out as many licenses as you can ask for without talking to Microsoft ever again. This is why manual audits from Microsoft are still a thing.

      -Group Policy and WSUS control over Windows Update in Professional provides more control now than was available at any earlier point in Windows' history. There's literally nothing extra available for Windows Update in the Enterprise/Education variant. You don't even need a Windows Server for the GPO controls - just run gpedit.msc locally, or install the RSAT tools and join your systems to a Samba domain, adjust to your heart's content. A basic deferral policy to lag security patches by a handful of days and major feature updates by a few months takes moments to configure, and avoids the worst impacts of Microsoft's buggy updates automatically. Go WSUS and approve/deny updates on a totally custom schedule with optional local patch caching to conserve bandwidth or allow Windows 10 systems to share patches amongst themselves based on subnet or other criteria. Modify behaviour of reboot nags/no-reboot time windows, etc. Update control in Home is truly gimped, but I can't bring myself to entirely agree that this is a bad thing given the sheer mass of totally unmaintained systems out there, and the shared nature of the Internet.

  3. Stupid is as stupid does. by Sponge+Bath · · Score: 3, Funny

    Microsoft's updates are like a box of chocolates...

  4. At this point by nehumanuscrede · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think most Windows 10 users are doing everything they can to disable any and all updates of any kind considering Microsoft's track record recently.

  5. WTF. by Imazalil · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yeah, undermining people's trust in your OS's security update mechanism is great idea. I really hope someone got a raise for this.

    F*uking hell. What kind of drugs would any semi-self-respecting developer have to be on to suggest this, and gets it ok'd by multiple managers.

    Can we bring public stoning back.

  6. Infrequently-used computers by Mr.Radar · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I have a laptop I infrequently use that has Windows 10 (non-Pro) installed on. I boot it up once a month to install updates (so I don't need to wait for update installs when I need to use it for other things) and I always use the "check for updates" button to make sure there aren't any more updates to install. I absolutely do not want beta updates installed on this machine nor would it be good for beta testing them since I hardly use it. This is just giving me more incentive to finally get around to wiping it and putting Linux on it.

    --
    What if this signature were clever?