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Microsoft's first cumulative update for Windows 10 - KB3081424 - is causing havoc for some users. How do I know this? Because I spent a good part of my Sunday morning dealing with it, that's how.
The problem, in a nutshell, is that the update puts affected systems into an endless crash loop. The update tries to install, gets to a certain point, fails, and then displays the unhelpful "We couldn't complete the updates, undoing the changes."
If it stopped there things wouldn't be too bad, but because Microsoft now forces updates onto Windows 10 users, the OS kept trying - and failing - to install the update, which in turn placed the system into a periodic crash/reboot loop that put quite a dent in my productivity.
To make matters worse, the tool that Microsoft released to hide or block toxic Windows 10 updates (as reported by my ZDNet colleague Ed Bott) didn't allow me to prevent this update from attempting to install. So I was forced to either abandon the machine until a fix was made available or try to fix it myself.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-cumulative-update-causes-reboot-loop-havoc-for-some-users/
Submitted from IRC.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday August 11 2015, @02:29AM
Yes, we realize that. In fact, that is part of the reason we like Linux - virus writers mostly fail to support Linux.
The sane and rational thing to do, is to abandon those softwares and hardwares that don't support Linux. On Linux, you, your company, even your dog, can search for, and install software to your liking - and alter that software to make it more to your liking. On Windows, all you get is what some proprietary vendor offers - and you very seldom have any idea what that software is doing.
(Score: 3, Touché) by frojack on Tuesday August 11 2015, @04:39AM
You over state the case.
Most people can NOT make their linux software better. Step outside of your own provincial little world and you find that not everyone is a programmer.
Most proprietary software does exactly what it says it does. Those that don't cease to be purchased, and that pretty well kills them off.
People can actually tell that their taxes weren't computed correctly, their email never goes through, or their cad drawings don't actually print.
They can't fix the software, but they sure as hell can determine that it is doing what it sold as doing.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @07:53AM
Blackboard is a proprietary educational software system.
Getting the vendor to patch bugs or add features is like pulling teeth.
Moodle, OTOH, is FOSS.
There are Moodle developers for hire across the landscape, ready to modify the software to your specifications.
not everyone is a programmer
As the above example demonstrates, that is not necessary.
The concept of a bounty on a bug|missing feature is another paradigm available to FOSS.
Closed code slams that door tight.
Sometimes just mentioning a feature that you think would be cool to the app's development team can make a light bulb go on over their heads.
(The LibreOffice crew comes immediately to mind.)
With a proprietary software vendor?
Good luck contacting any actual techies.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @08:20AM
You are contradicting yourself. That has not killed Exchange Server off yet.
I used to work as a sysadmin, and I can tell you that every single time an email disappeared, an Exchange Server was involved. While email is not officially guaranteed anything, the protocol does make it really hard for a mail to get lost. The sending mail server does not remove a mail from the queue before the next hop mail server explicitly has acknowledged and taken responsibility for it.
We used email for some automated data exchanges (no human involved, e.g. from one financial system to another), and the only times mails were lost... Exchange Server.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday August 11 2015, @08:45AM
Most people can NOT make their linux software better. Step outside of your own provincial little world and you find that not everyone is a programmer.
Even non-programmers benefit when anyone can work on the software. For one thing, they can hire anyone to implement their desired changes. For another, people will often decide to contribute to Free Software of their own accord, and non-programmers and programmers alike benefit.
Most proprietary software does exactly what it says it does.
And perhaps more. Maybe it also contains backdoors, violates the users' privacy, and has other anti-features. Who knows?
Those that don't cease to be purchased, and that pretty well kills them off.
Unless the problems aren't so staggering as to chase them away completely. Microsoft and Apple like to get people 'addicted' to their software as early as possible so that they are dependent upon it. It would take a colossal amount of abuse and screw ups to chase normal people away. And that's what proprietary software does: It forces you to be dependent upon your masters as long as you use it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nuke on Tuesday August 11 2015, @12:13PM
Most proprietary software does exactly what it says it does. Those that don't cease to be purchased
Ah! the Grantham Grocer Fallacy [demon.co.uk]
Ie, that in a free market the "best" emerges by competition, and the inferior goes to the wall; no political or other outside interference is necessary or desirable. ...... In this free market theory there is an assumption, usually unspoken, that the customers are all-knowing and all-wise.
But they are not.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday August 11 2015, @02:18PM
I'll go a step further. A fair percentage of customers are damned fools.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday August 11 2015, @09:22PM
I'm sorry, but in my experience FOSS software is more likely to perform as it claims to perform than is proprietary software. This despite the fact that most claims made by proprietary software vendors are so vague that they cannot be falsified. (The benefit of a marketing division.)
That said, there were decades when I had niche needs that were not properly filled by FOSS software. That has become much less true over time. It's true that the place filled by Deneba Canvas is not properly filled even by a combination of the Gimp and Inkscape...but it's pretty close. And the spot filled by Finale is not properly filled even by a combination of Muse (MuseScore?) and Frescobaldi. But it's close.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Wednesday August 12 2015, @12:06AM
But don't forget that it only in the last several years that interoperability with Windows document formats finally arrived in the Linux world. Mostly in the form of ODF packages that were released for both windows, mac and linux.
The arrival LO and OO allowed many many shops to solve the document handling issues, usually by abandoning MS Office all together. Its amazing how quickly most people can make that jump and never look back.
These days you can survive in a microsoft shop running any modern distro, usually causing no inconvenience to yourself or your workmates. That wasn't always true. For a while, my day job specialized in the integration of Linux workstations and servers into windows shops. There were things that didn't work well, there were things that didn't work at all.
Quickbooks (love it or hate it, it still rules) is still a nightmare, unless the users use the semi-functional on-line version, or run something under wine or in a VM.
As a lone user, you might find some not-too-horrible combinations of packages that do what you want, (or almost), but as soon as your work product depends on others, and their's on your work product, things get tricky.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday August 11 2015, @11:00PM
The average person can reasonably hire someone or ask a friend to add a feature or fix a bug in FREE software. It would likely be cheaper than, e.g., calling a plumber. That's why FREE software is so important; go read some of Richard Stallman's writings. He may be crazy or autistic, but his fears have proved true time and again.
The same cannot be said for proprietary software.
>Most proprietary software does exactly what it says it does.
Not really. Having dealt with a lot of misbehaving software, I have observed that in reality the rate of "misbehavior" is more or less the same between free and proprietary software. The difference is that in free software, it is much easier to fix. Either someone else has already fixed it for you, you can fix it yourself, or, as I note previously, you can hire or ask someone to do it for you. Believe it or not, most FOSS devs are happy to improve FOSS software as long as you ask nicely.
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