Yeah, the recent # of updates with critical failures has resulted in a huge loss of trust. I wouldn't touch an insiders build, I rely too much on my machine being stable. It is rather sad, a decade ago everything coming out of Microsoft was super stable, but of course it came out much more slowly.
The entire industry has moved to a "less testing, more releases" mentality. Not so bad for websites, where the damage is sandboxed by the browser, but IMHO it is unfortunate this mentality has pervaded everything.
I totally get rapid release cycles, I've lead teams that releases C++ code every 3 weeks! But we had a A+ solid test team backing up every one of our releases, and each of those releases got 2 weeks of testing done to them before they went to beta.
Best team I ever worked on automated every single bug that they have ever seen into a regression test. That mentality requires having a test team that is equal in size (and technical capability!) to the development team, and the current trend of "developer tests" tends preclude such thorough testing practices.
We live in a world where car entertainment systems can lock-up and reboot themselves and where headphones need firmware updates.
On the flip side, you have people now adays that are chomping at the bit to test out Ubuntu 19.04 and Fedora 30 in order to get all the awesome stability and performance improvements from the new version of Gnome. These days, it really seems to me that the only people taking the desktop really seriously are the major Linux distributions. People keep saying desktop linux seems to be waning, but I'll believe it when I see it. Every week it seems like theres a new forbes article or Linus Tech Tips video on desktop linux. Not that this will be the "Year of the Linux Desktop" or anything like that, but it really does feel as if some of the strongest advancements to desktop OS is happening in linux (Minus the hardware support for new monitors/graphics/peripherals)
> On the flip side, you have people now adays that are chomping at the bit to test out Ubuntu 19.04 and Fedora 30 in order to get all the awesome stability and performance improvements from the new version of Gnome.
And there are other people running Debian Stable.
I don't think there's anything wrong with Microsoft's fast release cycle, but I think there's lots wrong with forcing everyone on that cycle. Microsoft already makes LTSB/LTSC—why is it limited to enterprise customers? Microsoft seems to be afraid of people actually buying LTSC and preferring it...
I am really glad to hear that if true, altho I was never a desktop lover (using i3 mostly but just as a modern semi-tmux replacement, not using it on Windows at all except for wallpaper). One day I might be able to totally ditch Windows (hopefully, I do like it a lot, but Linux culture is something else).
Yes, almost every single bug (not cosmetics IMO) should have proof in the form of test. Not doing it ? Instant turn down for me.
But its not only about bugs, MS should not mandate new features on me, only security fixes. In one of my previous updates my camera stopped working so I couldn't use any IM any more. Tried to fix it for days in vain. Then latest update returned it so I realized that first time they simply turned it off by default (for paranoid people I guess that cover their camera with a tape; I found a setting after reading a changelog). Why ? WHy? WHY ? Why turning off camera FFS ? Or any other stupid decision like keeping windows.old for months with all those GBs of unused space ...
You are totally right about it - web apps need this, browser is their OS. Normal OS doesn't. Even phone doesn't. At least leave me an option.
> But its not only about bugs, MS should not mandate new features on me, only security fixes.
Eh, it depends.
Microsoft got seriously dinged in the press, and by customers, for their long release cycles. MacOS and all the mobile OSes, offered seriously cool new features on a regular basis! Windows looked stale by comparison.
And some of the new features are sweet, such as the new terminal! Heck having native OpenSSH support built into the OS is wonderful! Being able to iterate on search so it now actually works! The improvements to OneDrive and the underlying file system. These are all great features that have rolled out with Windows.
(Media controls from the lock screen, improvements to Windows Snap, better BT pairing.)
Meanwhile Android is set to kill file managers, and Google Music can't differentiate between differently named files that have blank ID3 tags, necessitating my using a file manager to play my MP3s. (That one seriously throws me for a loop, just show me the file name as a fallback!)
(I should just get around to manually adding ID3 tags, but how is a regular end user supposed to figure out what is happening?)
Honestly most of the time rolling Windows updates mean my OS just gradually gets better. I don't notice it unless things go wrong, but isn't that how it always is with software?
Make features. Make them optional, non-imposing and non-surprising on existing systems. Maybe do reverse on new installation. You can be nice and respect existing people choices.
> Meanwhile Android is set to kill file managers
Well, there is always Total Commander which has a decent music player too. But yeah, its like Exploder era again.
> And some of the new features are sweet, such as the new terminal! Heck having native OpenSSH support built into the OS is wonderful!
Argh... sweet new terminal 20 years behind everybody else. What else ? Notepad update ? Paint ? Some other completely granny stuff ?
Why is this integrated into OS update is beyond me honestly. Adopt decent package manager and update tools on its own (Chocolatey as an example). I don't need OpenSSH most of the time. When I need it, its `cinst openssh` away. Why is that a problem ?
Actually, I always cringe when OS updates brings awesome new "features". OS update should be all about kernel, file systems , drivers and other low level shit. Package manager can cover everything else.
> I don't notice it unless things go wrong, but isn't that how it always is with software?
It shouldn't be like that with OS. OS is not a typical software. Murphy always worked like a clock for me, so now, I only update OS (Linux too) when I am on vacation :) and have time to lose. Or I can revert ASAP (VM, BTRFS...)
The entire industry has moved to a "less testing, more releases" mentality. Not so bad for websites, where the damage is sandboxed by the browser, but IMHO it is unfortunate this mentality has pervaded everything.
I totally get rapid release cycles, I've lead teams that releases C++ code every 3 weeks! But we had a A+ solid test team backing up every one of our releases, and each of those releases got 2 weeks of testing done to them before they went to beta.
Best team I ever worked on automated every single bug that they have ever seen into a regression test. That mentality requires having a test team that is equal in size (and technical capability!) to the development team, and the current trend of "developer tests" tends preclude such thorough testing practices.
We live in a world where car entertainment systems can lock-up and reboot themselves and where headphones need firmware updates.