Then they could, but it would be painful and probably not profitable. It's also possible they just don't want to.

Ask who feels the pain: Microsoft or the user ?

The other part I can't wrap my head around is why the hell the update service swallows so much in terms of system resources.

If I update one of my tinkering computers that has been sat powered off for a few weeks, it happily runs in the background and lets me get on with whatever else I want to do without consuming both CPU cores and a good chunk of RAM. This is even possible on my elderly Core2Duo laptop.

Run W11's updater on the 2022-ish Dell laptop I have for work. Core i7 32GB ram, so a pretty powerful machine, yet the CPU hits 100% usage, with 2-3GB RAM getting swallowed for good measure. Not exactly what you want for a background process.

Damnit, that'll teach me to post before caffiene kicks in. That should have said "Elderly Core2Duo laptop running Ubuntu".

That's OK. Without knowing the exact distro I think we could have worked out either it was that or an old version of Windows that doesn't get updates any more.

We have a lot of Linux devices at home including three early Intel macbooks with Core2Duo CPUs running LinuxMint from SSDs.

If I am downloading and installing updates, using a browser at the same time then it will update without becoming unresponsive. The fan might start hissing but that is to be expected. The rate limiting factor in the process, given that the SSDs are quite quick is our slow 4G internet connection.

I only get to see Windows 11 on my PIC's work laptop supplied by their employer. Then only occasionally, fortunately.

My main concern with the Windows 11 laptop is that, looking at my pihole logs it has gone from trying to phone home to the mothership once every 4-6 seconds to trying to phone home almost every second. That one laptop, when it is on accounts for over 25% of daily pihole domain block events.

If Windows 11 didn't need to try to send data back to MS so often then maybe it would run and update a little faster.

Fun fact:

Bought a Framework laptop for Christmas. Went back to Linux. Because I did not see a path from Windows 10 and I've grown increasingly frustrated even with that.

While I was doing this, I had my old (up-to-date) Windows 10 machine sitting on one side, and my shiny new Framework on the other.

And for 2 days, I didn't need to touch the Windows machine at all. I was too busy having fun and trying out games on the Framework (the new ones have a RTX 5070 in them, and Steam Proton is amazing).

Anyway, there was a file on my old Windows NVMe that I needed, and it wasn't worth dismantling the old laptop to get at its two NVMe's, so I thought I'd just turn it on and grab them quickly.

Without prompting, Windows Update process on boot. Spinning circles. Okay, fine. Well... I'll do something to occupy myself.

It was at this point that I realised that the reason I was having occasional problems with the Framework was that I'd installed Ubuntu 24 LTS instead of 25, and I was reading their pages and it clearly said you needed 25 because of a particular kernel that had the drivers that would stop the problems I was having (and they were right). Dammit. Look back at the Windows machine... still churning. Oh, sod it, I'll just start on that.

So I did a dist-upgrade to 25 (which involved looking things up, like the config file changes to go from LTS to normal distro, the commands to do so, the download of a full distro upgrade, etc.). It did it. I was still browsing and gaming while it did it all, I hadn't needed to do a thing, I barely noticed it was running. Look over to the Windows machine... STILL churning (and that had 64GB and NVMe, so I don't know WHAT it was doing). Okay, sod it. Yes, Linux, you can reboot to start the new kernel. Linux rebooted. Literally seconds. Logged back in. A full Ubuntu 25 machine. Tested out some applications and games. Problems "fixed" (really just me being a dolt and trying to get Linux on it ASAP and not realising I needed 25). Windows? Still churning.

In the space of a few minutes I'd upgraded the entire OS and every application on Ubuntu, and was inconvenienced to the tune of one reboot, under 30 seconds, at my option whenever it was convenient. Meanwhile, Windows was in a 45-minute long update cycle that I had no warning of or control over, and that was JUST the OS. And it wasn't "upgrade to 11"... it was just a normal monthly set of Windows 10 updates that had released in the TWO DAYS since I'd turned it off. I still literally managed to get in a full game of Counterstrike (about 20 minutes) on the new laptop before the old one then rebooted twice and finally let me log in and get the files I'd been needing. And then I turned if off again immediately.

The next day, I removed the NVMe's from the old laptop and copied/installed them into the new one and juggled all the partitions around between drives. No way I was going to subject myself to that again, I'll just mount the drive directly from now on if I need a file.

It was just... such a perfect illustration of Microsoft and Linux's attitude towards users, towards updates, towards code efficiency, towards consent, etc. that I found it quite amusing. And that it happened AS I was obsoleting Windows in my home to become entirely Linux again.

No background processes for updates (unlike Linux these days). Update takes exactly the time to download files and write them onto the disk, so it's internet link speed and disk speed limits only. Reboot in seconds and forget about it until next convenient time when I decide to run update again.

Daemon icon, because *BSD.

It's the same for Edge, if you don't use it for a month and then fire it up to check something, you have to go through the Microsoft nagging bullshit every time.

and... You have to read carefully what you're clicking: "Don't untick the box if you do not don't not want to not set as default"

^^^ That's the stage I ALWAYS avoid for my own sanity.

It's a pain in the backside. I have a laptop which I use when travelling. Sometimes (depending on required company events), it might not get powered up for 2-3 months at a time. Then when I do power it up, it always insists on running like a pig for ages, taking 15 minutes to shut down due to the application of updates etc.

I have to admit that I ended up installing "Windows Update Blocker" as it gives me an easy way to enable/disable updates, plus an easy way to see the current status of the Windows Update service. It's not ideal, but it at least stops the thing from trying to update when I'm trying to shut the laptop down in order to board a flight, or any of the other infuriating times when Windows decides to spend ages updating at a deeply inconvenient time.

I then typically try and remember to power it up at home every now and then, enable updates and let it catch up. But even then (prior to installing the blocker tool), it had a habit at times of thinking it's all up-to-date, only to discover a nice fat update that needs to be installed the moment I'm in a hotel room or airport with crappy slow Wifi or something.

We are mostly using Linux so can laugh here, but we have a Win10 laptop for some jobs that need Windows natively (configuring tool for some hardware, etc). It is not so bad as the other tales above but still has notable outages, but that is due to us setting it to a specific Win10 build to prevent it being pushed to win11 without our consent.

I have my windows pcs set to show me that updates are available but to not install them until I let it. I never find updates running when I've not told it to. When I go to power off I get extra options in the list to allow me to install the updates if I want. When I boot the PC it might flash up a message to say updates are available but it NEVER tries to install them without my consent.

So what does "Windows Update Blocker" do? Because it sounds like your problem is you don't know how to configure Windows Update.

Windows of any version since 3.1 should never be raw-dogging the network. Put it behind a proxy and only let specific applications through.

In essence, if Windows update can access the Microsoft server, you have failed. Updates should be applied deterministically offline and responsibly.

(This is basically the same trivial advice as "don't log in as administrator for day to day work")

I left Windows 11 on my new computer as a dual-boot option. I haven't actively used Windows for more than a decade, using Linux Mint instead. However, for the last few months Zoom has been problematic on Linux, taking 100% CPU and the graphics slow and stuttering, so I've started booting into Win 11 for Zoom which works fine. But my god, the Windows updates! Before booting into Windows I always do a backup of my Linux files, I got bitten once by a Windows update years ago which trashed the dual boot and took over the entire computer. It won't get me like that again. I leave Windows to update overnight every few weeks and typically the following morning it is sitting there waiting for me to enter the Motherboard level password. Then it requires several cycles of spinning circles, updating your computer, don't turn it off, shutdown, motherboard password, reboot etc. Windows update is such a pain compared to Linux updates. All because Zoom has become a bloated sack of rocks on Linux.

All because Zoom has become a bloated sack of rocks on Linux.

Try using [1]https://meet.jit.si/ it works well on all operating systems that we use, PC as well as 'phones. You can use its own app or via a browser.

Open source, you can run it on your own servers but do not need to.

[1] https://meet.jit.si/

I had a NUC under the TV used as a console for playing games. It didn't get much use so when it did get powered on it spent more time updating than playing games. I say had because due to Intel quality engineering it just died one day never to return.

It would be the perfect excuse to replace it with a Steam Machine which like a Steam Deck would update quickly, painlessly, and usually without the need for rebooting... oh, now the global economy is shot to shit and they can't launch it.

Your least-worst affordable option. At one time I would have only suggested Chromebooks for the technically inept who don't value privacy, but now with MS raping your consent in oh so many ways I no longer see Google as any worse than MS.

Few people really need a traditional OS with all of its capabilities, so Chromebooks are fine, or an iPad is probably as good if not better for video calls, etc, if they don't really type very much.

The worse thing I find for updates on a new machine it letting it do it.

It will download update, reboot, download updates, reboot.. and eventually find there's a new version of windows 11.

As we're always using pro or higher and can jump parts of the setup annoyance, I've taken to getting it to the desktop asap, then pulling the update assistant (which then needs the windows 11 compatibility checker to check the machine running windows 11 can run windows 11, another MS classic there!) and jumping it to the current release before letting updates run.

It's a pain in the bum that MS is trying to make harder to do.

A couple of weeks ago, I had to do a fresh install of Windows 7 to use a legacy app that doesn’t run on Win10 or Win11

It took several hours to install 165 different patches and updates.

But, once installed, a bit oh history could run and I could get the job done.

I've got a Macbook which only gets used occasionally, and the same applies to that - and the updates are often much larger than the Microsoft ones.

This isn't a Windows-only issue.

This is absolutely 100% not the case - they are not the same thing at all. MacOS will download the update in the background silently and then prompt you a couple of times to reboot to finish the install - the reboot takes slightly longer than normal.

I'm not going to re-document what's in the article - but people can be faffing around with Windows for hours, or even days, to get it fully updated, with updates coming in waves - you finish one set of updates, reboot, just to be met by another set. And lets not even start on the issues of updates being rolled back, or updates for updates for updates (and so on and so on). The whole system is a complete mess.

No other operating system is as bad as Windows for updates. Not Linux, not MacOS, not iOS, not Chrome OS, not Android, not BSD. None of them have the same issues.

And the worst thing? Whilst update systems have slowly improved on every other modern OS they've gradually got worse and worse on Microsoft. It was literally more reliable to install a Service Pack 30 years ago than it is to do a Windows feature update now.

I was in a business meeting with a client middle of last year with an engineer who had come across to the UK from Spain. About 30 minutes into the meeting her laptop suddenly decided to update itself to W11. Just over 2.5 hours later and after the 3rd reboot her machine finally displayed the W11 desktop. With all her icons and shortcuts rearranged.

Her PC is managed by the company IT function

In the afternoon part of the meeting her PC then started nagging about installing updates!

Thankfully i will be retired when W10 support ends.

I keep one secondary Windows bootable on a Linux workstation because occasionally someone was too lazy, stupid or incompetent to make their unavoidable applications accessible through other systems. And every time I have to switch it on, it starts some sort of update orgy, most of the times with more than one reboot. Luckily, since the demise of the Internet Exploder public services seem to have discovered that modern browsers use (mostly) standardized ECMA-Script, so it has been many months since I last had to start the box in windows. Soon I will reclaim the 250GB it blocks on the hard disk.

You could have a much smaller OS that would hardly ever need an update, and could function safely without being updated, if the design and coding were both of good quality. Design and coding are two different things.

I don't use W11. I hope it can be used offline without needing updating, at least once it is set up, as many people use PCs for work and keep them safe by keeping them permanently offline.