Almost two straight weeks of escalating news coverage around MSFT making desperate pleas for people to update and upgrade. Anyone else more afraid of updates than hackers now? I have had to reinstall every machine I manage on average every two months, and created dozens of images thinking I broke something but in fact had not. BSoDs, driver issues, unregistered dependencies unannounced for 8 months as users replaced hardware thinking it was their fault (“rare enterprise configs”), SSD failures that were mostly not SSD failures (see last issue), shutdowns, inability to shutdown, boot loops, inability to boot, cloud storage issues and somehow related OS hangs, inexplicable installation failures after previous updates installed just fine, updates with critical flaws that refuse to be uninstalled, features that never activate or that randomly activate and cause data loss or workflow disruptions, optional features that must be installed exactly for updates to succeed, and provisioned images (merely adding an update before install) causing corrupted and unrecoverable installations. For almost a year straight they can’t get anything right, won’t be honest about it, and what’s worse is that on top of it all, this is the first win11 LTSC release branch. All those “systems critical” devices with broken servicing stacks or going unpatched for fear of more damage by a legitimate actor than a malicious one. I don’t even remember the last time I saw not only two OOB updates in a row, but where one had to be pushed through WU it was so urgent. It’s so bad that decades of “I’m switching to Linux” grief that never manifested is now accelerating, but without the dramatic commentary; put up or shut up time is here for many. The linux ecosystem is mature enough that, for most use cases, people won’t even notice performance loss in gaming, just as NT is showing its age, AI is consuming them faster than if it was sentient and malicious, and QA has been shy of completely outsourced to consumer/business telemetry. What are your thoughts on the state of Windows? What hell have you been through? Or has everything been flowers and rainbows somehow?
I badly wanted 2019 LTSC but my 2025 hardware doesn't support it. Intel screwed me more than Mickysoft did. Never purchasing Intel again.
Most of the undesirable stuff on Windows can still be got around fairly easily. But the newer WinUI3 and UWP is totally a dealbreaker for a Win 32 purist. And worse it cant be got around too. Windows 10 is probably my last Mickysoft OS. You're 100% spot on about the updates. Nowadays, they break more functional stuff than they fix. I just completed a new build, patched until June 2025. No telemetry hooks, no EOS sub system, no ESU compliance checks. Microsoft can take a hike about "security"
Nah; hackers can win easy with outdated stuff, and if official updates don't install, I'd clean install and try it again (never had a update fail, but I know other OSs and can hop quick if Windows appeared too-broken that particular moment)