
Windows 10 is getting an easier way to update and install drivers - GordonS
https://www.windowslatest.com/2019/12/25/windows-10-is-getting-a-easier-way-to-update-and-install-drivers/
======
gruez
>Windows Update’s Optional Updates section will let you see all optional
updates including drivers and monthly non-security updates in one place.

If I remember correctly, all the way up to windows 8.1, you could choose which
updates to install. It was only with windows 10 that they removed the ability
to select updates. It's ironic how they're touting this as a new feature, when
really it's fixing a regression.

~~~
zerkten
Choice is a problem with updates, but they probably went too far. When a
choice is possible then people will skip updates which endangers the whole
ecosystem.

The prevalence of Windows means that they can't let individuals make too many
choices because bad outcomes reflect on Microsoft and not those users or
admins who contributed to the problem. There is pressure from governments and
companies for protection from infrastructure threats which drives some of this
thinking. This is not limited to Microsoft, even Firefox introduced updater
changes which limits how users can opt-out of automatic updates.

There was likely an assumption that restart-less upgrades would become a
reality more quickly than they have, so the responsible teams went with a
simplified update mechanism to protect the ecosystem. That backfired in a
range of other ways, but at least the ecosystem is relatively safe.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _When a choice is possible then people will skip updates which endangers the
> whole ecosystem._

There is a reason for that. Reason not being just the choice itself, but
mostly that automated updates tend to range from inconvenient, through
bloating up the machine, to outright dangerous to your data and software.

The reason to install updates is security. The reason to not install them is
all the other things that get included. Because of that, I wish it was a
standard to run security updates separately from feature updates, and keep the
second type fully optional. Yes, it's more work for the developers, but it's
better for the users (and our industry is going too far with preferring its
own convenience over end-user value).

~~~
ohithereyou
>Because of that, I wish it was a standard to run security updates separately
from feature updates, and keep the second type fully optional. Yes, it's more
work for the developers, but it's better for the users (and our industry is
going too far with preferring its own convenience over end-user value).

This exists for Windows 10. It's called Windows 10 Enterprise Long Term
Support Channel. It gets feature updates every 2-3 years but each release
comes with a minimum of 10 years of security support.

Leave it to Microsoft to make stability as an Enterprise fearure.

------
Havoc
If this gets rid of NVIDIAs god forsaken driver update BS then I’ll be
delighted.

(Requires logging in with a password/profile it doesn’t remember between
updates and disabling pi hole for some stupid reason)

~~~
knolan
Isn’t this part of the (awful) GeForce experience app? You can still just
download drivers directly from the Nvidia webpage without logging in.

~~~
tony
Yes, plain drivers are available:
[http://www.geforce.com/drivers](http://www.geforce.com/drivers)

That said, Windows 10 driver handling _already_ handles the basic drivers out
of the box (at least for me)

Generally though, these manufacturers have their own driver / bios update
software that 1.) creates additional background / tray apps 2.) autostarts 3.)
offers implicitly to download extra "helpful", "optional" software

Examples of software where all three happens: Fujitsu ScanSnap, Gigabyte Aorus
Motherboard, Lenovo Advantage

So now there's a passive, consistent performance loss on the system, a tray
icon hogging up space, "helpful" notifications, and unsolicited popups not
offering driver updates, but to download additional software (box is already
checked)

One nice thing about Linux/BSD desktops is even when Nvidia did proprietary
stuff, the most you'd see back in the day is an Nvidia logo when starting X
(editing xorg.conf could disable it)

~~~
vbezhenar
I bought Lenovo laptop few days ago and installed fresh Windows. Then I
enabled WiFi and left it for a hour. It installed ALL drivers including Nvidia
drivers and Nvidia control panel. I checked driver versions with Lenovo
support page and every driver was fresh. Windows did awesome work with
automatically installing drivers. Nvidia driver was not fresh, I think it was
from July, 22, 2019, but I don't think that it's that old anyway. So for
ordinary users Windows does very good job at installing drivers and I would
recommend against doing anything by hand, unless absolutely necessary.

------
RandomInteger4
I built a new computer and for the first time in over a decade I wanted to try
Windows, but apparently I was missing drivers for something. It never told me
what I needed drivers for, and even with all the drivers for all the parts I
could find on a separate USB drive, it couldn't find the drivers that I
supposedly needed, so I gave up and chose to install Ubuntu instead.

Ubuntu apparently knew all the drivers I needed, fetched them from beyond the
great ether, and all was in harmony.

Why is this so easy for Canonical, but not Microsoft?

------
tinus_hn
Now if only they’d vet the drivers in Windows Update and block these enormous
bloatware turds that have become fashionable.

------
jokoon
I have a non-computer-savvy friend who regularly has to reinstall nvidia
graphic drivers because windows 10 update REGULARLY overwrites them with
drivers that CRASHES blizzard games (world of warcraft, overwatch). Has to be
done every 4 days or something like that.

It's really weird to not know who is at fault here, if it's nvidia, microsoft
or blizzard. There are no good way (other than disabling updates) to prevent
windows update from overwriting drivers.

I wish microsoft would do something about this. Can't even remember if I
submitted some feedback. Not to mention this computer is crazy slow since the
upgrade from win8 to win10. I know the usual "get a SSD", but that computer
was NOT THAT SLOW before the upgrade. Anyway this computer is a all-in-one,
which has weird hardware. But still, it's a i7, with 6GB of ram. It's hard to
believe it takes so long to open the start menu or just a folder.

Oh yeah, other thing: another friend bought an used laptop which had some
insider preview enabled. 3 weeks ago her microphone just stopped working.
Apparently you cannot remove an insider win10 build WITHOUT REINSTALLING. I
was not able to fix it. I'm not even a maintenance guy.

~~~
derefr
> Apparently you cannot remove an insider win10 build WITHOUT REINSTALLING.

Well, yeah. If a beta takes a wrong direction in the design of a new on-disk
data structure, do you really expect them to write a reverse-migration that
turns it back into the old format? That's a lot of work for a tiny point-
release on branch of development they're not even sure they're going to make
public. No commercial OS supports this.

~~~
TeMPOraL
They could've warned instead of defaulting to failure.

I wish they'd ease up with signing core system files with short-lived certs
either; I once had to reinstall my PC after not booting into Windows for ~3
months - when I tried to start Windows after that break, I discovered some
core DLLs had expired certificates, preventing the system from booting.

------
thibran
It's the year 2019. We communicate with the speed of light across the ocean
and manipulate DNA, but installing drivers is still not a solved problem on
Windows...

... and a modern display server is still not used by default on Linux.

~~~
JohnTHaller
To be fair, one less desire-able 'solution' to drivers issues would be to not
allow the hardware to work at all. MacOS users don't have access to Nvidia
graphics cards, for example. I'll take Windows' driver work over that any day.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
MacOS includes drivers for (most) 700-series graphics cards. It's just, Apple
hasn't shipped Macs with nVidia cards since 2013ish, so they don't ship Mac OS
with drivers for cards they never used, either.

nVidia used to ship third party Mac drivers for their newer cards, but they
decided to stop maintaining them a couple years ago, possibly because Apple
said they wouldn't sign them them†, depending on how you interpret vague PR
statements. Still, the third party drivers work on slightly older OS's—I'm
currently typing this from a macOS High Sierra machine that has a GTX 1080 Ti.

† I want to note that driver signing isn't some draconian Apple thing, 64 bit
versions of Windows also require signatures. You can install unsigned drivers
on macOS by partially disabling SIP, but presumably nVidia didn't want to ship
drivers that would require that.

~~~
maximilianburke
It’s not the driver signing that’s the problem. It’s that Apple is a
gatekeeper for driver signatures and won’t release drivers unless it suits
them.

I know the GTX 1080 works on High Sierra, but that OS is at (or near) the end
of its supported life.

Microsoft manages the driver signing process but doesn’t play these games. If
nVidia wants to write and maintain drivers for macOS, why get in their way?

~~~
Wowfunhappy
I guess it just depends on what's actually happening. What nVidia has said is:

> Apple fully controls drivers for Mac OS. But if Apple allows, our engineers
> are ready and eager to help Apple deliver great drivers for Mac OS 10.14.

A lot of people have decided to interpret this as "Apple is refusing to sign
nVidia drivers", but I'm not ready to jump to that conclusion without more
explicit details.

For example, nVidia has continued to release drivers compatible with High
Sierra security updates (necessary because nVidia driver coded their drivers
such that they'll refuse to launch on non-whitelisted build numbers). Apple
has not suddenly refused to sign those drivers.

My personal theory: in Mojave, all desktop compositing goes through Metal, so
nVidia would have needed to a major rewrite of their drivers. Given how few
Mac users install third party graphics cards, this isn't worthwhile for
nVidia. nVidia wants Apple to implement some type of legacy shim in macOS that
drivers can plug into, and Apple characteristically said no.

That, to me, makes more sense than Apple suddenly deciding not to sign any
drivers which are compatible with 10.14+.

~~~
unicornfinder
People also seem to be interpreting the line "eager to help Apple deliver
great drivers" as Nvidia having new drivers ready to go, which I strongly
suspect isn't the case.

------
GordonS
Windows 7 does this for some drivers, but it only seems to be for a limited
list (e.g. selected Intel NICs), and the drivers are woefully outdated.

I guess this might be "enough" for people buying some of the most popular PCs
(e.g. Dell), but it's certainly not going to be for everyone.

~~~
deith
Every part of my computer, which I built myself, gets its drivers from Windows
Update. Drivers have been pushed from Windows Update since... forever?
Granted, I always install a more recent version myself.

~~~
GordonS
Huh, I've used Windows 10 for years now, and didn't realise it still had this
feature - I don't recall ever seeing any "optional updates"?

But then, for most things I always install recent'ish drivers from the
manufacturer myself, which I guess would disable this feature for at least
those things.

~~~
deith
Only that they are not optional, they force you to install those drivers
(unless you're installed your own before). But they do indeed show up on
Windows Update.

[https://filestore.community.support.microsoft.com/api/images...](https://filestore.community.support.microsoft.com/api/images/2f0c0423-8e09-4b73-bc97-c4d0359f2538)

------
Quiark
i love how all the way to Windows 7 (not tested any newer) it still has the
same GUI for driver installation as Windows 3.1

------
tpmx
I have been using Windows 10 (and its ancestors) on a kick-ass desktop PC for
the past decade or so. It's been a shit-show. I've probably spent about 2 full
days totally out of action, during this period, if I'm only counting downtime
caused by MSFT idiocy.

~~~
partiallypro
Are you a time traveler? Because it only came out 4.5 years ago...

~~~
tpmx
I'd like to remind all commenters of this part the HN Guidelines:

"Be kind. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more thoughtful and
substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. Have curious
conversation; don't cross-examine."

~~~
Dylan16807
Fair, that was snarky. But your response of offering a photo of your windows 7
disk was worse. Your initial comment didn't make sense until you edited it,
and there was no need to be so defensive about that. You could have just said
you meant 7-10.

And it's not the same product any more than XP and Vista are the same product.
A free upgrade is still an upgrade.

