News Microsoft blocks Windows 10 October 2018 Update over Intel sound issue

Words (almost) fail me.

Microsoft, WTF are you doing?

Just admit this semi-rolling-release model is an absolute shower of... and go back to the "service pack when we can be bothered" model. It's painfully obvious that you can't maintain the momentum necessary to succeed with a major update every six months.

At this rate it would be easier just to abandon the October update altogether and focus on getting the 2019H1 update to release without yet another carnival of errors.

I won't hold my breath.

 

Couldn't have put it better.

Please can Windows 11 just be Windows 7 with the good bits from Windows 10?

 

I agree completely. About the only thing I have thus far used that is only on Windows 10 is the Store for Forza Horizon 3, because I have a PC in Japan but not an XBox. If it was on Steam or even Origin or Uplay I wouldn't have touched Store with a bargepole. Shows the power of lock-in for popular franchises, though. Otherwise it's really minor things like the improved Task Manager (well, mostly improved Task Manager), faster boot and night mode... the improved driver stack has been a little hit-or-miss for me, with two laptops having apparently "bad" combinations of SATA controller (Intel) and SSD (Sandisk). Most everything else has been negative things like telemetry, Cortana, flat UI, constant minor tweaks for no apparent reason, reinstalling software I've removed (Microsoft, I do not want [censored] Candy Crush Saga! Be told!)

Don't even get me started on the near constant tweaking of Office 365 - especially recently. I was not happy when where I worked told everyone "no more Office 2010, it's Office 365 from now on". When I'm trying to work, I do not want to be a [censored] beta-tester for whatever UI tweaks Microsoft thinks will "improve productivity" this month. When stuff looks different or moves around, it actually slows me down, it doesn't improve my productivity!

I think it will take a major policy change across not just Microsoft but also other companies like Apple and Google before anything really has the slightest chance of shifting on that front. Software-as-a-Service (where you are the servant) seems to be the modern way of things.

 

Wasn't there not going to be a Windows 11? Wasn't Windows 10 supposed to be the "last Windows", that it'll become a rolling upgrade and Windows will eventually become an OS as a Service (aka subscription fee)?

 

How about just Windows 2000 with the modern APIs added? It has all been downhill since then.

 

Why not just go back to DOS?

 

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Vendor has driver flags set incorrectly. Do you:
a) Just YOLO and roll out the update, breaking everything ("OMG Windows just broke my sound!")
b) Hold the update until the driver is fixed ("OMG Windows keeps failing at updates!")
c) Resume building the teetring tower of driver-specific API kludges that toppled XP and that Vista was intended to wipe clean ("OMG Windows is such a ***********!")

 

d) Pay attention to what the "Windows Insiders" (aka: we-can't-be-arsed-to-do-our-own-testing-properly) have been telling you is a problem for months.

That one alone would have solved two of 1809's complete balls-ups.

 

What's the incentive for being on the insider program? Do they ship them a free ball gag or something?

 

Because multitasking and interface. If I wanted something unusably dated, I'd install Linux.

 

I'll admit I've never quite worked out what the incentive is supposed to be. Getting bleeding-edge versions of Windows, perhaps? Literally - not that the release versions seem to be a whole lot better at the minute - to run on hardware that you can't use as a daily driver because anything can break at any time... and if I can't use a system as a daily driver, how do I know if it'll have problems with my normal workload? So I could use it as a browsing box... great, just what I use Linux for so I've got a modicum of protection against the most common Windows-targetting nasties floating round the 'net.

With the near pathological obsession that Office 365 has with saving/syncing files to OneDrive (I swear my laptop syncs every time I stop typing for half a second) giving Insiders a free license for Office might be something of an incentive. That way I could at least test out Office related tasks without needing to buy another copy.

Depends on the Linux. Although I'll freely admit getting cutting edge stuff working can be a serious trial at times... I do not have fond memories of trying to get triple-monitor working, even two years after nVidia Surround became a thing. Unusably dated (but generally stable) = CentOS/RedHat, generally works on new hardware = Ubuntu/Mint/Fedora, careful 'cause stuff will break regularly = Arch, I-want-absolute-control = Slackware/Gentoo/LFS).

 

I just had Skype update on Windows 10 and my Taskbar icon disappeared. Normally, unpin and repin will solve some daft screwup like this, but Skype now gives me no Taskbar icon when open - and no "Pin to Taskbar" option in the right click menu in the Start menu.

Freakin' wonderful.

 

In theory: Driver and software developers test their software with newer versions to iron out bugs before deployment. Users test the new version to get new features early, and for telemetry to feed back exact fault logs.
In practice: Driver and software developers don't, 'power users' switch to the fast track and then promptly turn off all the telemetry (and go futzing in the registry) because "M$ r evil and want to read my fanfaction/steal my bank details/record my porn browsing history".

 

I'm more amazed that WMP has enough users to have discovered the bug

 

In all seriousness, when I want something non-Windows, I reach for FreeBSD.
I haven't actually seen a fully-assembled Linux distro I really like(and I do admit my tastes are odd). If I'm building everything from the ground up anyways, there's not really a compelling reason to stay on Linux, and I've found FreeBSD to offer a more pleasant experience with very little stuff that breaks regularly.

More importantly, FreeBSD isn't GPL software, which means I don't have to deal with the grave offense of acronym overlap with an 80s microcomputer's internal "OS".

 

I like that last bit. That's neat.

I can see where you're coming from, but sadly the scientific community - or the bits of it that I interact with - tend to ignore the various *BSDs unless it's Mac OS. I've had mixed success getting software to compile (or sometimes work, because it appears to compile fine but does stuff you don't expect in Free/OpenBSD...) and of course support for consumer-accessible high-end hardware can be a bit spotty. I tinkered with OpenBSD and FreeBSD when trying to get Linux software working; had more success with Free, but enough difficulties to keep me on Linux for now.