11

I, after a very long time, had to use Windows.

My Ubuntu system died yesterday with faulty hard disk. Good for me that all my data is on cloud and I dont lose anything apart from the software installations. I have ordered a new hard disk and it will come in 3 days time.

In the meanwhile, I wanted to continue my work and I have my wife’s Windows 10 laptop. She doesnt use it often ever since she got a Tablet last year. It was a good chance for me to try out Windows after a while.

The laptop hadnt been used for a while now(probably Dec 2020) and when I started it, I got all sorts of notifications for updates - Windows update, Browser Updates, other Application updates. Coming from Ubuntu world which has a single notification for all software updates, this was just too many notifications. Plus, for some applications you dont get the update notification till you open them.

And by far the biggest frustrating part of this is the Windows update which takes like forever to first install update after all applications are closed, and then installing and configuring some more when the system boots up. And all you do while this happens is watch the screen with progress indicator moving 1% every minute. The system is not usable and even more so, I dont know what application or package is updated.

I started this activity today at 10AM and its 11:53am now, and I still havent been able to use the system to actually do the work. Its a half an hour work on a Google Doc and I have been waiting for it for about 2 hours now.

Its so amazing that Windows system is so screwed still. I dont know what will it take for Windows to have a consistent package and release management. Its so frustrating to update each application on its own.

Comments
  • 7
    Slightly offtopic: is there a way to see "oh my ssd is going to fail tomorrow"?
  • 1
    To the last paragraph: there is windows store, but no one seems to like it.
  • 1
    @electriner I know about the Windows store, but the whole idea is not great. Its been a while since it existed, but its adoption by the application makers is not getting any traction
  • 2
    I assume once you've done all the updates and boot it up on a regular basis, it becomes usable.
    Also there's chocolatey, which let's you install almost all decently common apps from command line.
  • 2
    @nitwhiz In short: no, because the SMART data may be useless. Long version: https://blog.elcomsoft.com/2019/01/...
  • 1
    WinGet is an open source package manager from Microsoft (you can use Chocolatey if you don't want to go with MS). Pretty neat.

    The super long windows update time sounds like you're on a HDD, on my SSD it takes a minute maximum and usually a handful of seconds on average. While it's not great that Windows doesn't work well on hard drives any more, it really is pretty nice on SSD.
  • 1
    I have had to use an old laptop. Mediocre specs and a painstakingly slow HDD (think it had a write of a few Mbps or something I don't remember). The thing would be at 100% disk usage 24/7 pretty much. Booting took like 5 mins.
  • 1
    @electrineer most proper/serious apps don't seem to be on there. It mostly seems to be a lot of dumb spammy apps like the plays store also has.
  • 2
    @nitwhiz there is a tool I use called crystal disk info but that just gives the health of the drive and smart info, but for your drive to tell you when it's going to die is like anything else telling you when it's going to die.
    I've had drives that have died and then worked like brand new after a few months. Getting to my point, you can only predict when the drive might give up, not actually know...
  • 0
    @nitwhiz harddisk sentinel. Has saved my ass from ssd death. Twice actually.

    It just looks at the smart data, but turns it into something that makes sense (for ssds too) and gives an indication how long itll live.

    Has a free trial that does it all 😉 well the health status. You pay if you want to do extra testing
Add Comment