10mo ago

Microsoft wants to update your Windows 11 PC without forcing you to reboot

www.windowscentral.com Microsoft wants to update your Windows 11 PC without forcing you to reboot

Windows 11 may soon no longer require a reboot when installing security updates every month.

170 comments

So you mean they want windows to have something that Linux has had for 20 years? Android has also had this since ~2017 too.
- My android phone and Linux computers all still want reboots after updates...
  
  Linux only needs a reboot if you want to update the kernel, normally.
  
  "Colonel updates require a reboot, but just normal application updates do not. And most system updates do not. I partly misspoke about Android. I should have been more clear because I was referring to the A/B partition scheme, but yeah, to run the new system does require rebooting.
- I love linux and been using it for decades, personally and professionally, but no, linux doesn't have "hot patching" the same way as that article describes it. At most it can live patch the kernel (and only few distros actually use that), but definitely not for the last 20 years, and definitely not running processes. However, it does usually restart background processes after an update without requiring a reboot, but in my experience, often times the system becomes unstable after several such updates and rebooting is effectively necessary (though not forced, and that's why I like it).
  
  Yeah, the security in knowing that if you're way top busy right now, you don't have to install or even download any updates. And you don't have to worry your system will suddenly become crashy, glitchy, and unstable because it decided on its own to install some things and let you know you can reboot whenever.
  It's so freaking annoying I have to use Windows at work. It takes liberty to do what it wants and then my workflow gets hosed.
  I get that there is security, but if you force updates, I should have some kind of notice or "hey, we need to install mandatory updates. You can schedule in the next 24 hours when or you can get them over with"
  
  yeah but even if you need a reboot, linux just needs a regular reboot.
  not that long ass 25-minute windows update reboot
  
  I frequently reboot, so for me, something like SteamOS’s a/b atomic update process would be ideal: no instability, no forced reboot.
  
  Windows doesn't force you to do anything. You can reboot or not reboot, or skip updates altogether.
- you still need to reboot your linux machine or relogin if you updated a process that's currently running (and in most cases most system processes can't be just restarted) (...and otherwise you'll just stay at the old version bit with new data which might cause some instability)
  yes, there's kernel hot-patching but it only affects the kernel, only viable for minor and security upgrades, does not come pre-configured on most consumer distros and not really suitable for home use.
  
  And you're saying, you expect Microsoft to come up with something better?

Linux has this
- Cool, so its possible then! I hope Microsoft makes it functional for Windows, too.
  
  It comes in 3 forms.
  Update small system components (packages) and load the old into ram until rebooting; I don't think this is possible on windows.
  A/B Image Based Updating; Android and a few Linux distros have this; probably one of the most stable methods.
  Live boot updates/Kernel-space Hot Patching; found mostly in Linux servers, and distros with a patched kernel; used mostly for security updates which is what windows is doing here, but Linux can do feature updates this way too.
  
  As much as I don't like window I want to see it get better :)
- How many people are actually using kexec to update Linux without rebooting?
  
  You only rarely update the kernel though
  
  Ubuntu has live patching free for personal use built right in. It's not exactly a niche thing.
  (I don't bother on most machines because I reboot my laptops every day anyway, but you know; nice for servers and whatnot).
- The chrome OS is method is pretty cool having a mirrored partitions the one not being used gets updated if there's an error the other one gets booted and reverted
- What's Linux? This is the first in hearing of this here on Lemmy.
  Can you provide me with an .exe of it?
  
  Does office365 support linux?

I remember some years ago there was a "malware" going around that would flash OpenWRT onto people's routers, and set them to have more secure default settings.
There should be another thing like that, but one that upgrades Windows into a Linux distro.
- That is absolutely hilarious. Good guy malware swooping in and fixing people's shit? Any chance you have a link?
  
  Gemini claims it doesn't exist when I prompted it for finding more info, so for the sake of testing out Gemini's capability of searching I'm doubly interested if this exists.
- And people will only notice because the ads stopped coming, because their system got secure and stable...
  And they'll still complain about THAT, for sure...
- Oh cool, I guess I don't need to play all my favorite games... Most is just as good right?
  You Linux Uber fans are too much sometimes.
  
  Sometimes people just don't think about that people can have different wants and needs.
  All, literally every game I want to play runs great in Linux, and my hobbies of self hosting, development, homelabbing, and data hoarding are all leagues better on it.
  That doesn't make a good choice for my friend that only logs on to play destiny 2. It also doesn't matter why, to my friend, its a bad choice. It could be the devs are chained and lashed by Microsoft for even mentioning Linux in the office, but what matters to someonethatt only wants to play that game with friends is whether it works.
- Yeah Linux is fun, until it breaks a week or two later. I'll stick with windows, because it never breaks.
  
  Windows never breaks? Uhhhhh, that's definitely not true. When I have to use Windows, I brace myself every time I have to update.
  
  Skill issue! How is my mother better at using Linux than you?😆
  
  Been running Arch on my work laptop for over a year. Still waiting for the fabled difficulty and update breaks. Starting to think in modern times its perpetuated to keep people on Windows.
  
  Oh really, I think you and my Debian server with >10 years of uptime should have a conversation.
  
  Name checks out.
  
  Linux breaking depends on mostly 2 thing:
  The user. Depending on what they try to do, it can easily break Linux. (looking at me somehow breaking KDE Plasma and somehow fixing it without understanding how it broke or how I fixed it)
  Updating (from what I understand, mostly a big issue on rolling release distros like Arch or Manjaro). Bleeding edge software with major bugs the stable release don't get can always cause instability.
  Though, I will say, that I've never had win10 crash on me unless I have too much stuff open or am being an absolute idiot. Windows always seems to be stable, at least I've never had issues for a long time.
  
  I use both. Can confirm windows breaks 10x more than Debian stable.
  
  Breaking Linux every week or every other week? That's almost impressive!
  
  Do you know what BSOD is?
  
  Lol, I see what you did here.
  I may start doing this as well... I'm SO tired of every post about Windows being flooded with Linux supremecists.

Even if Windows does this, trust me, if you have any Razer products, Razer will fill in the gaps for them.
That shit restarts my Windows machine nearly every fucking day.
- I love that the Razer installer pops up during windows intital setup. Seriously, chill out Razer, I don't want to sign in to you while I'm bypassing the Microsoft forced sign in.
  
  It looks like you changed the position of your mouse cursor. Would you like to reboot to apply these changes?
- This is an odd comment. I use a Razer keyboard and mouse and I've never experienced this. What products are you using?
  Edit: Thi said, I HATE how Razer and Nvidia make you sign in to update things. Like, REALLY hate that. They even force two factor on us. Like... Why the fuck do I care about account security for either of those?
  
  You can update Razer by signing in as Guest and not actually logging in. I think it is the same with Nvidia. They just eant you to think you need to log in.

Had a movie stop playing the other week (I use my PC as a Jellyfin server and watch on a Nvidia Shield in another room). I thought something had crashed, but when I went upstairs to check, it had realised nobody was watching it and fucking rebooted.
- you should probably use a different operating system if you use it as a server
  
  If it was only used as a server, then I would. But it isn't, so I don't.
  
  It's really not a good idea to have a home server you don't update, assuming it's accessible outside your network.
  Windows updates suck, but they can be delayed to only take place every 6-8 weeks.
  
  Or use Windows server. It would never do shit like that.
  Alternatively you could just not postpone updates for weeks.
  Just update your computers and this will never happen.
- Linux. Bsd. Etc.
  
  Living room PC is also used for playing VR games (since living room has the space required). Sadly Windows is the only option.

replicatethefractionofourpower.jpg
- It seems like Microsoft is going through a real phase of "I made this" and they're adding all these features that were core to Linux since damn near Linux's inception.
  Multiple desktop instances, sudo (which isn't the same sudo...), and now trying to mimic the rebootless update.
  Embrace, Extend, Extinguish when?
  
  Embrace, Extend, Extinguish when?
  What do you think WSL is trying to be?
  
  Um... they're an OS adding more OS features. Get over yourself, EEE is a real thing but holy fuck stop it.
  (WSL is concerning EEE-wise, literally nothing else you listed is a valid complaint)

I used to want this, but the latest updates of windows have all been so buggy. I'd prefer to not have this shit happen in mid usage. They once fucked up the search by accident and it was disrupting enough to my workflow until I found ways to disable the search being a default web search.
- It looks like it's just security updates, not feature updates. So I would take this as a win. If a 0-day is discovered, being able to update systems to fix it without a restart is fantastic. I know plenty of people who avoid restarting their computer if they see the update icon in their system tray. If we are talking security, these people could be leaving themselves vulnerable for days/weeks. Being able to push security patches without restarts is a big win.

So in other words the
HI WE ARE GETTING THINGS READY FOR YOU
Screen can just pop whever it wants for 20 minutes at a time without warning? Yay...
- I know people don't want to hear it anymore because it's beating a dead horse, but.... Linux.
  
  Honestly not being able to move the start bar and being told it won't be changed because their awful new start menu needs it that way was a dealbreaker. Been running Linux Mint exclusively on my desktop for the past few months and it's been pretty smooth, even for playing games. Thank goodness for Proton!
  
  I've been using both OSs for over 20 years and the ONLY reason I use windows is for CAD (just 2d). All the foss options have potential but are very poor options for a longtime autocad user. Wine implementation is currently broken/terrible. VM is sorta a fallback option but doesn't run as fast as a native windows machine.
  I plan on switching to Librecad or something similar but it's like a 10/20 year plan and something tells me I'll have to develop the features I want myself.
- I don't think those words describe what the intended behavior is, no. I think it's supposed to be seamless and not really too noticeable. That's the impression I got from the article anyway.
- I took it to mean ittk update things in the back round like Linux can which is nice.

Microsoft have done this previously and shelved it because their method had enormous security issues.
I don't see this going well for them.
- Isn't it possible they could learn from their mistakes? Just playing devil's advocate here.

This was the pipe dream for many many years now. Not the first time MS is talking about it either.
It's a thing in the Linux world and it's just too costly to support and therefore most user facing distros outright don't support it.
- Orlly?
  I've been using Linux desktop for a good 20 years now. All debian based distros (loads of them) do, all redhead based ones do, and those two together likely comprise the majority of distros.
  I can't remember the last time I rebooted my desktop (or servers, for what it matters) beyond a power outage in the office
  
  Do you have kernel live patching enabled?
  
  Your updates both do not apply kernel updates but also aren’t applying in general unless you are restarting all apps, services, and sessions. Basically just reboot.
  Only servers administrated well do online updates correctly.

So according to the official page on Hotpatching (without any trackers like in the article), this reminds me of kpatch. I guess Microsoft really wants to spend the effort of making that work. Isn't kpatch not really supported (without $$$) by many larger distros since it's prone to break easily?
- Isn't the concept of kernel live-patching just "wait until the kernel's not using that module, and slip in anupdatesd version"
  
  I don't know about Windows, on Linux it's at the function level, and some cases are tricky.
- I found more info: Microsoft SQL Server Engine already does hot patching and I guess the same way will be used in other MS apps: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Azure-SQL-Database/Hot-Patching-SQL-Server-Engine-in-Azure-SQL-Database/ba-p/849700

Didn't they say the same when they were developing windows 10? I don't believe it's gonna happen.

So in other words yet another thing that Linux already had for the past 20 years? Go on like this and in 50 years Microsoft might actually have a capable operating system.
Dump windows, Install Linux, stop paying Microsoft money for badly designed crap that will spy on you.

So they are going back to the way Linux does it since forever?
Why not just go image based? Instant reboots and even faster updates.

Cant upgrade to 11, since my motherboard is too old. So reap what you sow, perhaps ?
- Can't upgrade to 11...
  ...cause I purposely fucked with the TPM in bios
- Your motherboard? Does windows 11 care about that?. I thought it mostly cared about CPU.
  
  Yep but in my case my motherboard is from 2013 that uses cpu sockets that haven’t been produced anymore

me looking out on the sea of windows users like, oh the humanity

Everyone wants this.

Haven't everyone install linux yet?

It keeps trying. I keep denying it.
I would far rather pay a fee for an OS, like I did for every computer I built up to Win 7, and not have to deal with M$oft’s BS and ad-pushing.
- you and every person who upvoted you did not read the article lol
  
  Or even the preview...
  Lemmy moment.
  
  Or even the headline
  "your Windows 11 PC"
- You deny security updates? Why would you do that?
  
  I raw-dog the internet.
- Well, Windows isn't free...

Who cares? It's not exactly traumatizing to reboot your computer.
- You’ve clearly not had an update trigger when you were trying to present something, join a meeting, or simply do a quick restart after installing a program and get hit with a 10min “updating windows; do not shut off”
  
  It shouldn't do it automatically. It shouldn't update during a presentation at all.
- I find having to boot into windows traumatizing regardless
- It is for me.

[---]
- Can't tell if you're trolling or actually that stupid.
  Event viewer does exactly what the label says, let's you view things. In this case, logs.
  Is your computer on, we won't even touch the fact that's 100% connected to a network, then it's vulnerable.
  Let's assuming you're just trolling though.
  
  I actually meant Group Policy Editor. Sometimes I make mistakes like that. I will not dive into how precisely I made the mistake.
  Coming to your second point, of course it is vulnerable, but I meant it in a practical sense. I am not here to waste time debating, so I am leaving it at that.
- My Windows98SE box isn't getting updates anymore.
  Do you have a fix for that?

170 comments