Windows 11's 2025 Update Arrives (bleepingcomputer.com)
- Reference: 0179604868
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/09/30/1827229/windows-11s-2025-update-arrives
- Source link: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/windows-11-2025-update-25h2-is-now-available-heres-whats-new/
The update removes PowerShell 2.0 and the Windows Management Instrumentation command-line tool to reduce the operating system's footprint. John Cable, vice president of program management for Windows servicing and delivery, said the release includes advancements in build and runtime vulnerability detection paired with AI-assisted secure coding. Microsoft designed the version to address security threats under its security development lifecycle policy requirements. The company plans to expand availability over the coming months and will document known compatibility issues on its Windows release health hub. Devices with detected application or driver incompatibilities will receive safeguard holds that delay the update until resolution.
[1] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/windows-11-2025-update-25h2-is-now-available-heres-whats-new/
Re: (Score:1)
So, how well does LibreOffice (or OpenOffice... whatever the big office thing is for *NIX) do at loading MS Office docs?
How well did it do at detecting all hardware and installing every driver needed?
Would your grandmother be able to figure out how to use it?
Re: (Score:2)
> So, how well does LibreOffice (or OpenOffice... whatever the big office thing is for *NIX) do at loading MS Office docs?
These days? Surprisingly well. Funny what threats of massive fines from the EU can do. Remember that LibreOffice is _older_ than MS Office. It is also a lot better.
Re: (Score:2)
Well maybe as a bundle, but Microsoft Word (1983) and Microsoft Excel (1985) predate LibreOffice by a large margin.
Re: (Score:2)
> Well maybe as a bundle, but Microsoft Word (1983) and Microsoft Excel (1985) predate LibreOffice by a large margin.
I think LibreOffice was forked from OpenOffice which was forked from StarOffice (or something like that) which started in 1985, so close.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Division
Re: (Score:2)
Fair enough. Incidentally, Microsoft Excel is exactly 40 years old today (30 September 1985). I heard an interview with one of the developers on the radio today.
Re: (Score:2)
No they don't. OpenOffice and LibreOffice trace all the way back to StarOffice, which began life as StarWriter (released in 1985) by Star Division.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually 2 years for Word and zero years for Excel. LibreOffice was called Star Office back then.
Re: (Score:3)
It is pretty good these days. I've done some Debian and Ubuntu installations on various hardware. Almost all hardware was recognized and worked out of the box, I only had to install a separate driver for a Coral AI coprocessor. LibreOffice works well and handles Word documents and Excel sheets, both loading and saving. What is missing is VBA. But it's got some good extras, like saving documents in epub (ebook) format. Installing it is easy once you have a distro ISO on a USB stick. I think Grandma co
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder if Mono still has visual basic support, and if it could be used to add it to LibreOffice? [1]There is this [mono-project.com] but it says it's outdated
[1] https://www.mono-project.com/docs/about-mono/languages/visualbasic/
Re: (Score:2)
[1]https://drive.google.com/open?... [google.com] -- Office 2016 (the way I designed it)
[1] https://drive.google.com/open?id=1UF_2DxUGG0D09F5gQS62U2QQDVhjb8Qj&usp=drive_fs
Re: (Score:2)
[1]https://drive.google.com/open?... [google.com] -- Libre As close as I can get to the same part... Libre shows the entire document in landscape.
[1] https://drive.google.com/open?id=1kb-FZagqNoQeISJuloTHX0EJIuFPLrAF&usp=drive_fs
Re: (Score:2)
My dad is in his late 70's and I put Linux on his notebook. He loves it. No issues with LibreOffice either.
He's a grandfather, so I guess that qualifies for your question.
Re: (Score:2)
I think I can answer one of those questions:
I use Office365 daily from a browser on the Linux laptop my work gave me.
Re: (Score:2)
That works if you subscribe.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, it's not ideal if you aren't a billion dollar corporation that can waste money on what amounts to an inferior version of Office.
But, I can use Linux as both my host and target system for my project, and make my white papers and slides and do the other annoying non-coding parts of my job.
Re: (Score:2)
I can run Win10 without a cent leaving my pocket on any machine I build. And, I can use Office 2016 the same way. And, it opens files with formatting intact... see: [1]https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org] (and it's child post)
[1] https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23809362&cid=65694090
Re: (Score:2)
I had a grandmother who was a small business owner using LibreOffice for 10 years.
If i could have gotten her accounting software to work on Linux, I could have moved her to one of the desktop distros too.
Here we go (Score:4, Funny)
I look forward to the many Slashdot articles in the next few weeks about the way Microsoft has broke things again with their latest "upgrade".
Re: (Score:2)
Hehe
Yeah... get rid of the things that get used most when installing programs, and the two things that powerusers rely on the most.
Re: Here we go (Score:2)
It's just 2.0 from what I understand, 5.1 and 7.x are still there.
Re: (Score:2)
Windows is a toy and MS clearly views it as such. This change just makes that a bit more obvious. They will continue to make Windows worse until they have no users left.
Powershell 2.0 only (Score:2)
Version 7 of PowerShell isn't going anywhere.
Look at the numbers (Score:3)
If you consider Windows 11 fully updated will consume 40-50GB of disk space.
Removing those two apps will save approximately 50MB of disk space.
Microsoft... we lie to you... now upload all your stuff to the cloud so we can mine it.
Bad decisions (Score:5, Interesting)
So they're removing PowerShell 2.0 and the Windows Management Instrumentation command-line tool to reduce the footprint of the OS but also bringing back video-wallpapers. Great exchange.
[1]https://www.ghacks.net/2025/09... [ghacks.net]
[1] https://www.ghacks.net/2025/09/22/windows-11-is-getting-a-video-wallpaper-feature/
Re:Bad decisions (Score:5, Informative)
"reduce the footprint"... how much space can both of those require?
And, both of them are among the most useful things in Windows.
(I know the *NIX users are going to chime in saying that we should all install *NIX... if it works for you, use it. Some of us use stuff that needs Windows)
Re: (Score:1)
wmic is ~500kb. I suspect this is more a move to push people into powershell that to reduce the footprint.
It was just way, way to practical and useful a utility for microsoft to just leave alone; and on top of that it takes users away from their sacred cow? Had to be killed.
Re: (Score:3)
Perhaps they meant 'attack surface'.
Re: (Score:1)
(And, now... the *NIX argument)
(Grab some popcorn... might run into extra innings)
On a cellphone or tablet... sure.
How does that translate to a PC? Can you install *NIX on a random box of PC parts without a single issue or having to download a special package?
I can unplug the modem, and install Win10 Pro on my tower (in about 10 minutes... 24-core Threadripper, Titan X, with 128gigs RAM, 8 harddrives... 2 are NVME). I'll have to download the graphics drivers afterwards (after I power the modem back up), a
Re: (Score:2)
I have a plain Debian image I can pop in about 90% of the machines we're removing Win10 from without any hassle. When the hell is the last time you installed Linux?
Re: (Score:2)
About 25 years ago... Mint 8.0. Didn't like it because nothing I used (which was all Windows software) worked in it (it was on a 266MHz K6/2... yeah, that far back). You're going to say "but *NIX is free!"... I've never paid for any software, so that doesn't apply. "But, Libre is so good"... I direct you to: [1]https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org] and it's child comment
[1] https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23809362&cid=65694090
Re: (Score:2)
> Perhaps they meant 'attack surface'.
Yes, Microsoft meant and said it, when they announced WMIC's deprecation nine years ago, in 2016.
[1]https://techcommunity.microsof... [microsoft.com]
"Removing a deprecated component helps reduce complexity while keeping you secure and productive."
Less legacy code to maintain means fewer opportunities to get it wrong.
As much as I'm used to doing "wmic bios get serialnumber" as a quick & dirty way to get a machine's details, I guess I'll learn to fire up PowerShell and do "Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Bios | Select-
[1] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/windows-itpro-blog/wmi-command-line-wmic-utility-deprecation-next-steps/4039242
Re: (Score:2)
Out of curiousity, how much does removing the telemetry and spyware reduce the footprint (of win7 where you could remove it)? For example, how much space is freed running a script like this? [1]https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150902212203/http://www.hakspek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/block_w10.zip
Re: (Score:2)
It's not so much about what space that frees up... the telemetry stuff is built into Explorer and such... it's mainly registry entries that enable that stuff. As far as I know, there isn't one specific program hiding in Program Files32 or someplace that does all that.
Re: (Score:2)
It's Powershell, it probably takes up 2gb in libraries.
Re: Bad decisions (Score:2)
What it really means is that those things are failures from a security standpoint, and Microsoft has no idea how to make anything secure.
Re: (Score:2)
All in a day's work when you are hard at enshittifying your products. As Microsoft has been for a while now.
Re: (Score:2)
Also, is there still a real shell, or is Win11 now "no user serviceable parts inside"?
Re:Bad decisions (Score:4, Interesting)
Given PowerShell is at 7.5 right now, deprecating the version shipped inside Windows might not have been a bad idea. (PowerShell is also open-source and available for Linux, macOS and others as well).
Heck, even the Windows 10 PowerShell was constantly reminding you probably want to install PowerShell 5 when you invoke it.
Same goes for WMIC, since everything it does is doable via PowerShell since WMI APIs are still available and PowerShell can interface with them directly.
It's really about removing ancient versions of software that are no longer maintained by the Windows team and replacing it with software that is maintained by a separate team - PowerShell is now maintained outside Windows, and WMIC was for when PowerShell didn't exist or was poorly understood. Nowadays people aren't using batch files or CMD scripts, they've moved to PowerShell scripts.
Re: Bad decisions (Score:2)
Just because it's OSS and available on macOS and Linux it doesn't stop being a big steaming pile of shite