Adventures With Windows 10

[uncle mark]

It is humorous that Windows 10 updates are so unreliable that one needs an update blocker :) But if someone must have Windows that is a good idea.

In the past when I've set up a Windows 7 machine, I always set Windows Update to download and install updates every Monday. That gave MSFT six days to fix their screwups after Patch Tuesday. I've been able to avoid dealing with W10 (my fixit business has evaporated with the advent of smartphones and tablets, and although I do miss the pocket money I sure don't miss the headaches), so I don't know if that's even possible with W10.

[KBD]

In the past when I've set up a Windows 7 machine, I always set Windows Update to download and install updates every Monday. That gave MSFT six days to fix their screwups after Patch Tuesday. I've been able to avoid dealing with W10 (my fixit business has evaporated with the advent of smartphones and tablets, and although I do miss the pocket money I sure don't miss the headaches), so I don't know if that's even possible with W10.

MS has made it extremely difficult to avoid updates with Windows 10. The Pro version allows for delayed updates for maybe a couple of months for Enterprise, but that's it.
I used to keep a laptop or Chromebook handy for my wife, but now she just uses her 5" phone and a 10" tablet. I hand her one of my laptops on the very rare occasions she wants to use one.

[el.Barto]

Ouch, would back up any critical data. Noisy hard drives make me nervous. It would not hurt try Affinity under wine, and/or see if you can find a Linux app that works just as well.
I recently read complaints that the Spring Update is renaming partitions on some computers and adding new partitions. Not sure why the let such a buggy update into the wild.
BTW with Debian my laptop is running much cooler and faster than with Windows 10.

The "noise" is the normal sound or clicking of the HDD while reading. On Windows the HDD is busy all the time. On MX it's much more "silent".

But I think that my backup-plan should work in the case...

Poorly Affinity Photo isn't running under wine until now :-(

[KBD]

Wow, I thought there were people at MS beta testing these releases :(
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... 0ce22ce2f1

[sunrat]

Debian unstable is more stable than Windows. Actually it's more stable than Debian stable this week, considering the nasty kernel regression.

[KBD]

Debian unstable is more stable than Windows. Actually it's more stable than Debian stable this week, considering the nasty kernel regression.

What's happened with the kernel? I saw a couple of posts on Reddit that their computers running Linux Mint would not boot after kernel upgrades.
BTW, I thought Debian Stable stayed on the same kernel with just kernel security updates?

[sunrat]

There was a kernel security update that caused boot problems for a number of users. It was fixed with an update a few days ago.

[KBD]

There was a kernel security update that caused boot problems for a number of users. It was fixed with an update a few days ago.

That's probably what the people on the Mint Reddit were talking about. Unusual for a kernel security update to cause major problems.

[j2mcgreg]

Earlier this month Microsoft issued a huge update to Win 10 that among other things pooched the built in email client Win 10 Mail. The solution is to go to Settings – Privacy – Email and turn on ‘Allow other apps to access email’, reboot, and voila! It works again. Now, this setting is one of the ones that is recommended that should be turned off in order to hinder Microsoft’s attempts to spy on its end users. So the average Joe has to agree to Microsoft’s intrusiveness in order to receive email. How this fits in with any definition (except Microsoft’s) of privacy is truly ironic.

This is just the newest addition to my list of things I hate about Microsoft.

[uncle mark]

Earlier this month Microsoft issued a huge update to Win 10 that among other things pooched the built in email client Win 10 Mail.

It did a lot of damage to a lot of machines across the board. I just had one brought to me that would not boot for nuthin'. All the built in recovery options failed. This was a machine that had been updated to W10 from W7, and the key code sticker was intact. Since I was able to back up the data (thanks MX!), the owner was happy to have me give him a clean install of W7 rather than reinstall the abomination that is W10. [And before anyone asks, this wasn't a good candidate for a Linux conversion. The main use for this laptop was for maintaining all the membership records and scoring and cumulative points and whatnot for a big duplicate bridge club using a proprietary program with no Linux version available.]