Alright! Who's stoked for Windows 10 20H2? Anyone? Well, it's ready for commercial pre-release validation anyway

Windows 10 20H2 has arrived for commercial customers to start prodding for pre-release validation. As with 2019's November Windows 10 update, 20H2 is more of a patch than a full feature release and, according to the company, "will be delivered to devices currently running Windows 10, version 2004 using an enablement package …

[Version 1.0]

"a blessed relief to administrators simply seeking stability"

The best, and most stable, Windows operating systems are Vista and Windows 7 ... because Microsoft is no longer fiddling with them. One of the factors that causes issues with all Windows 10 feature releases is that you are going to lose a little (1Gb?) more storage each time.

[iron]

Re: "a blessed relief to administrators simply seeking stability"

> you are going to lose a little (1Gb?) more storage each time.

Apart from the version that reserved some space for future updates, no you are not.

[bombastic bob]

Time for another 6 hours of lost computer time

Last week, a computer at the customer site decided to "update itself" for 6 hours again. The computer's user powered it up only to get the update notice, which he then allowed to procede... [maybe he had no choice this time? had it been TOO long putting it off?]

In any case, it "updated" from before 7 AM to after 1PM, and operated "more piggy than usual" for another hour. Very similar to the LAST time this happened.

And he's gonna have to go through that *AGAIN* ???

"Updates" are *HIGHLY* *OVERRATED*

[BobChip]

Re: Time for ZERO hours of lost computer time

Linux. That's how I do it. I'm on a less than 10 Mb connection, and most "big" updates are completed - download and install - in less than 5 minutes. Silently, in the background, with no lost working time (and only very rarely, the need to re-boot). Windows? Never again.

[quxinot]

Re: Time for another 6 hours of lost computer time

Not true, Bob. Good updates are wonderful things that increase security, speed, and usability.

I'm not sure how long it's been since I saw one for Windows, though... And not to single MS out, as they are very decidedly not alone in stringing together "updates" that give no improvement to those metrics. At this point, when something updates I'm usually pleased if it doesn't break things too badly.

[Stuart Castle]

Re: Time for another 6 hours of lost computer time

Ideally, Microsoft and Apple would slow their release schedule for new OSes to a sensible pace (perhaps one major version every two to three years). I've not included Linux because most distros seem to follow a sensible release schedule. Unfortunately, the current development trend, which seems to have been largely instigated by Google seems to have force both Apple and Microsoft to increase their OS release cycle to one major update a year with minor updates more regularly (in the case of Apple, every 6-8 weeks).

I feel a slower release cycle would enable the vendor to get rid of more bugs BEFORE release, not after.

These bugs need to be fixed, which leads to a problem. Do Apple and Microsoft release potentially dozens of patches each fixing a few bugs, but has little risk of breaking something else, or do they bunch together the fixes in one (or more) larger patches that fix dozens of bugs, but slow the install, and introduce the potential to break other stuff.

That said, I think if a machine is taking 6 hours to patch ANY OS, there is a problem with the install. I just did a fresh install of Windows 10 1809 on a VM. I kept the VM off the network while installing, because I didn't want it to install any updates before I could time it. It took 43 minutes to get this fresh install of windows 10 to the point where it had installed all updates. This included a feature update to 1909.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Time for another 6 hours of lost computer time

Windows updates are a pain because they generally seem to do it in three stages:

*patch the current setup

*prepare, download and update the new version

*apply patches for the new version

- often accompanied by reboots

Linux is much better behaved (for Ubuntu it's an update every two years and a combination of LiveUpdate and patches that run in background and rarely need a reboot.

MacOS is, in my view, almost as well behaved as Linux. One major update a year is OK as it runs smoothly (an old m/c may take up to an hour to install on restart but you can choose when to let it do that); patches occasionally need a reboot but far less frequently than Windows.

My Mac is 8 years old so no further main updates - High Sierra with occasional security patches - nice and stable!

[David Lewis 2]

Re: Time for another 6 hours of lost computer time

I feel a slower release cycle would enable the vendor to get rid of more bugs BEFORE release, not after.

That could only work if they weren't using the end users as the QA department!

Many, many years ago, I remember someone defining the relative costs of bugs discovered during Design, Testing & Production. Presumably that knowledge has been forgotten, or perhaps it has been discarded as it is "old".

[Hubert Cumberdale]

BAH

When will they stop fiddling with settings!? As long as they keep the old disk management snap-in, I'll be moderately happy. But I can't get the old display settings panel now, and the new one is so flashy it crashes and disappears more than half the times I try to open it (dependent on the status of the planets, it seems, because on any given day it decides not to stay with me, it will be unavailable that whole day (if not week)). There are now so many different ways to manage settings I don't know where to look any more.