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Two users have submitted stories about Microsoft's intended change to how it provides updates and patches in the future.:

Running Windows 7 or 8? From October, Monthly Patches Are All-or-Nothing

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

El Reg reports

As of October, users of Windows 7, Windows 8, and various server products can [say farewell to] a Patch Tuesday of downloading multiple files: Microsoft is implementing the monthly patch rollup it promised in May.

At the same time, however, Redmond has decided to kill off individual security patches, something that might not please sysadmins. Instead, a monthly security-only rollup will collect "all of the security patches for that month into a single update".

[...] Instead of individual patches for each platform, for Windows 7.1 SP1, Windows 8, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, and Windows Server 2012 R2, there'll be a single set of updates.

The monthly rollups will include security patches and bug fixes, and each month's update will include the previous month's. That will reduce the chance that an update fails because it's got a dependency on a prior update (which, as Microsoft's Nathan Mercer writes in the announcement, can often mean hunting for a file that's hard to find).

[...] Servicing Stack and Adobe Flash won't be included in the rollups.

[Continues...]

In the comments we found these gems

• I am already imagining having to miss out on critical fixes as some not-too-critical update in the package is broke and affecting the overall result.

• The fact that you have to take the crap with the updates is one of the reasons so many of us rejected 10. Linux, as always, will be patched as soon as the updates become available; no waiting a month for MS to get around to providing a big monolithic update.

• I shudder to think how this will affect environments with WSUS for the purpose of limiting specific patches to specific machines.

• Does this mean Windows Update won't 'think about it' for 15 minutes?

• A double whammy for those on restricted bandwidth [because a) everyone gets the patches for other versions, and b) last month's patches included

• Just call it a Service Pack. By the end of next year, we'll have Windows 7 SP17. It's not elegant, but it's much clearer than KB6765431123134654741324.

Windows 7, 8.1 Moving to Windows 10's Cumulative Update Model

martyb writes:

In with a story from Ars Technica — Windows 7, 8.1 Moving to Windows 10's Cumulative Update Model

October 2016's Patch Tuesday will see the release of the first Monthly Rollup for Windows 7 and 8.1. This will be a single package delivering all of the security and reliability improvements released that month. Patch Tuesday will be delivered through Windows Update (WU), Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), and System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM). Subsequent months will have new Monthly Rollups, and these will be cumulative, incorporating the content of all previous Monthly Rollups.

[...]

Microsoft will also create security-only updates that include all the security fixes released each month, without any reliability or feature changes. These updates won't be cumulative. They will only be offered via WSUS and SCCM; WU users won't see them.

What Microsoft won't be doing after October, however, is shipping the individual hotfixes any more. Fixes will only be available through the Monthly Rollup or security-only update. This means that the ability to pick and choose individual fixes to apply will be removed; they'll be distributed and deployed as a singular all-or-nothing proposition. Microsoft argues that this will improve patch and system reliability. The company only tests configurations where every update is applied (with hundreds of individual updates, it's simply not possible to test all the individual combinations that a user might choose). This means that users and organizations that cherrypick their updates and only install a subset of the patches that ship each month are actually using configurations that Microsoft itself has not tested. Combining the updates should mean that end-user systems are closer to Microsoft's tested configurations.

[...] Going forward there will also be an equivalent patching regime for the .NET Framework. WU and WSUS will both distribute a Monthly Rollup of security updates and reliability improvements, with a security-only update offered to WSUS alone. The corresponding server operating systems—Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, and Windows Server 2012 R2—will also move to the same rollup model as the desktop platforms will use.

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2