The last time I used Windows on my personal computer was back when Vista was still around, but since Vista was not long for this world, you would have to go all the way back to Windows XP to find the last time I dealt with a Microsoft operating system getting a major update (which would have had to been Service Pack 3).
With Windows 10, however, MS appears to be big on making a major update to the OS at least once a year. This actually makes a lot of sense - this is basically Microsoft taking the Apple route. Mac OS has been around for ages, and Apple just keeps adding and updating and tweaking it. There is nothing stopping Windows 10 from being handled the same way, and so that is exactly what they are doing.
Unfortunately, Windows 10 updates are notorious for being buggy and unstable. The situation is bad enough that for their latest update - Windows 10 Version 1903 - Microsoft added the ability for users to delay the update for several months, just in case you want to wait for the kinks to be ironed out (or come up with a solid backup plan). That sounds scary!
And yet I am kind of a sucker for these kinds of updates. I have no idea why I am. In my experience, at least on Mac OS, these kinds of updates tended to cause my Macbook Pro to get increasingly slower, and as the years went on, fewer and fewer of the new features were built to support my hardware. Common sense dictated that I should have left the OS be as long as possible, and yet I never did. I guess I am a sucker for feeling as if I am on the “latest and greatest”.
So with that in mind, I kicked off the update to 1903 over the weekend. Overall, it was extremely smooth, but I did end up spending the better part of a Saturday night trying to get the OS in order. Here are my personal experiences. Please note that I do not expect you to have the same experience, nor am I trying to make too grand a judgement about this update merely based on what I encountered. I am merely discussing something that occurred to me because hey, this is my blog after all darn it!
Install
The update installed like any normal Windows update. This is extremely nice. Major Mac OS updates make you go through a setup process akin to the one you go through for a new computer. It feels unnecessary and almost condescending. “I know this is not a fresh install, and I know it is not a new device, but I am going to treat you as if it were one anyway”, is what it seemed to say.
I have no idea how long it took to install, because I did it overnight.
Transparency
One of the things I actually like about Windows 10 is how you can put a pretty picture in the background of the lock screen. Whether you customize it with your own photo, or let Windows choose random nature scenes for you, the lock screen gives me a sense of peace and tranquility. It does not feel cold and utilitarian, nor does it feel immature and toy like. It puts me in a good mood before I begin whatever task I am logging in to do.
For some reason, Version 1903 tries to ruin my good vibes. The login image is now blurred out once you begin the login process. Here is what my login screen looked like before:
And here is what it looks like after the update:
It looks like someone smeared the screen with petroleum jelly!
Apparently this is part of Microsoft’s new Fluent Design initiative, which is going to drive their user interface design across all products for the forseeable future. They call this their “Acrylic” effect - essentially, they use a blurry, not-really-transparency effect in certain contexts, so that you can see the content behind it without it distracting you from the task at hand.
Personally, I don’t buy it. I think this is just an excuse to bring back the Aero Glass design from Windows Vista/7.
Here’s the problem I have with the whole “free you from distraction” argument. If you find yourself being distracted by the pretty picture on the lock screen, I think the better approach would to simply change it to display a solid, static color. Then nothing can possibly distract you.
Furthermore, consider this other rather obvious application of the Acrylic effect in this particular update: the settings application. Here is how it looks without:
And here it is with Acrylic applied:
Do you really, really need to see a blurry strip of your background wallpaper when tweaking settings? What makes matters worse is that the blur effect vanishes when the Settings app loses focus - it goes back to the solid grey version above.
Reading about the overall approach to Fluent Design, I like some of the ideas they have for the future (such as the corners of a button lighting up depending on where your mouse is). But this Acrylic effect is a bit silly to me. My only hope is that as they add more and more of this design, we are able to continue disabling individual features on a more fine grained basis. I would hate to lose out on the good stuff in order to ditch the bad. For now, I choose to disable Acrylic completely.
Light Theme
Windows has a Light theme now! I love the idea in theory. People tend to prefer dark themed GUIs to prevent eye strain, but I don’t tend to feel eye fatigue from brighter UIs. This time around, unfortunately, that is no longer the case. The Light theme immediately felt like an assault on my eyes. I am still glad it was added, but it is not for me.
WSL Updates
Windows Subsystem for Linux gets one very useful update - you can now view files in the Linux filesystem via Windows Explorer, and much around with the files in the Linux filesystem with standard Windows tools. This is an extremely useful feature that is much welcomed, though it comes with strings attached. The feature is facilitated via a server daemon that runs in the Linux distro itself, so you must have your Bash shell up and running in order to ensure that your files won’t be corrupted. Second, it is highly recommended that you access these files by running explorer.exe from within the Bash shell. This is actually not that hard to do, but I can see a scenario in which someone navigates to the files in some other way, and messes something up.
It also gets one minor update - the wsl command line tool is a bit simpler to use, not in a “take out features” way, but in a “make the command and its option flags less verbose” way.
No WSL 2
I somehow was mislead into believing that 1903 would mark the appearance of WSL 2. This is not the case, sadly. WSL 2 is still only within the realm of Windows 10 preview builds, which means it will be a little longer still before I can take advantage of having a real Linux kernel running in Windows.
Linux Distro Changes?
I found myself wondering whether my Ubuntu install for WSL was out of date. A trip to the Windows App Store made the situation all the more confusing. It claimed I had not installed Ubuntu, and proceeded to try and do so.
What it ended up doing is installing Ubuntu 18.04.2, alongside my original install of 18.04.1. I was a bit puzzled by this. On one hand, in place upgrading of Linux is generally discouraged, so I can see a situation in which Microsoft does not allow it. On the other hand, I can also understand that they might not want to list every single version of every single Linux distro as separate entries in the App Store.
What I think actually happened here is that Microsoft updated their delivery mechanism for WSL distros. My evidence for this is the fact that my original installation is located at a folder named CanonicalGroupLimited.Ubuntu18.04onWindows_xxxxx, which clearly shows the version number, while the new distro that was installed was something like CanonicalGroupLimited.Ubuntu_xxxxxxx, which has no version. Perhaps going forward these images will simply update themselves as if they were standard apps.
For now, however, I deleted the new thing, and simply did an in-place upgrade of my existing WSL setup.
Uninstalling More Stuff
In older versions of Win 10, certain built-in applications could not be uninstalled, no matter how little use you had for them. 1903 lets you get rid of some of them, including 3D Paint, Groove Music, and Mail. Others, however, remain as permanent features, including Maps, and “Your Phone”. Why you cannot get rid of these (and other) particular is still beyond me.
Skinny Start Menu
The Start menu is much skinnier and simpler. There are less tiles clogging up the joint. I honestly did not notice this change until it was pointed out to me. I suppose it does not matter to me much, since I run almost every application by using the search bar, rather than the Start button.
Speed Improvements
Microsoft claims that this update contains newer, better patches for the Spectre vulnerability. The original patches were done in haste, to get something out there, and the result is that they ended up adding some unintended performance hit to the operating system. These new updates are supposed to bring that speed back.
The jury is still out on this one, at least for me. On battery power, there is still a bit of pause when clicking on certain elements of the OS (likely due to the hardware being intentionally throttled). When plugged in, it does feel as if some things are snapper - Windows Explorer, for example, shows up immediately, rather than with the split second pause it used to demonstrate. Beyond that, however, I cannot think of any other ways in which anything is running quicker.
Permissions Issues?
I noticed shortly after completing the update that I was unable to make changes to the lock screen. There was a bit of red text claiming that an Administrator blocked it via Group Policy.
That … doesn’t make sense. Windows 10 Home Edition does not have Group Policy, and this did not feel like the kind of setting that would get clobbered by an upgrade like this.
What I think happened is that I was in the middle of creating a Restore Image on a USB drive, and Windows needed certain settings to stay put for one reason or another. That, or something else happened that was blown away via a restart.
More Space?
Not being familiar with this process, I did not understand that these major updates to Win 10 causes your entire C:\Windows folder to be migrated to a folder named windows.old. I’ve seen windows.old in older OS’es, but I did not realize it was still around.
The point of mentioning this is that prior to the update, I had about 70GB free on my tiny SSD. After the update, I now have about 50GB - but the windows.old folder is 30GB large! That means that once I delete it (or once Windows automatically cleans it up), I should have 80 gigs free. I did not expect this update to actually free up some space, but I will gladly take it (especially if it is true that the OS is going to take approximately 7 Gigs to reserve for updates).
Conclusion
Nothing here blows my mind, but there are some nice improvements. I just wish it did not take me so much time to try and troubleshoot the lock screen and Acrylic issues. In both cases, I think I made things worse on myself by not just being patient and doing a restart when I had the chance.