Back in 2014 or so, I jumped on a killer deal at newegg.com for a 17″ HP laptop. If I remember correctly, they were unloading some machines that were essentially unused – returned due to buyer’s remorse or something similar – but that had to be labeled “Refurbished” because they weren’t technically new. Mine came packaged like new, and didn’t have a scratch. (I was also drawn to it because it had an AMD processor, and I like giving Intel some competition to help keep prices in check).

I run the Linux operating system on pretty much every device, but because this was around the time I was getting ready to move to Kansas, this laptop went into storage, and I never got around to replacing Windows 7 with Linux. I still hadn’t decided for sure where/how I wanted to use this machine a couple of years ago when Microsoft was offering free upgrades from Windows 7 to Windows 10, so I decided to hedge my bets and go ahead with the upgrade, knowing I could replace Windows 10 with Linux any time in the future.

Fast-forward to now. I know Windows 7 is reaching end-of-life (no more security updates) in less than a year, and I have a handful of apps – some related to equipment used for TPMS settings and tire rotations on the car – that are Windows-only. I do have a couple of Windows 7 virtual machines I can fire up from within Linux to run a few Windows programs I still use every now and then. They’re fine for running software, but can be fussy when there’s specialty hardware to interface with. So I figured I better have at least one machine running a current version of Windows as the primary operating system.

Knowing it had been a couple of years since I pulled that laptop out to do the Windows 7 to Windows 10 upgrade, I thought I should probably pull it out again and run any Windows 10 updates to get it current. One of the things that drove me to Linux several years ago was the painful and slow user experience (known as UX in the software/hardware world) of Windows updates, but I assumed Microsoft had made improvements in that arena by now.

Yeah. Not so much.

Knowing there were a couple of years worth of updates, I expected that the process to download and install them might take an hour or two. After letting the machine boot up, I went to Windows Update, started the search for updates, and waited. And waited. Finally after about 10 minutes, it came back with a list of updates, and started installing them. I checked in on it about 20 minutes later, and there didn’t seem to be much progress. After checking again 15 minutes later, progress had clearly stopped, even though the progress bar gave the impression it was still working on it. Eventually I wondered if I should reboot and start over, and when I finally did, the menu item didn’t say “Restart”, but “Install updates and restart”.

Note to Microsoft…maybe a message on the screen that says “You need to restart to continue the updates” would be helpful? So I restarted, let it install those updates, then went back to Windows Update again to continue. Eventually, the same thing happened. I ended up needing to reboot in order to continue the updates, but without ever getting a message telling me so.

After going through this a couple more times, a browser window popped up after rebooting telling me I needed to download a newer version of Windows 10. (Well, duh…that’s why I was running Windows Update). There was an “Update” button in the browser window, so I clicked it, and that started a whole separate update process. It only took about about 10 minutes for the download process, but the “Preparing your updates for installation” part of the process literally took hours, as did the actual update process that followed.

Finally – a little over 10 hours after beginning the whole ordeal – the updates completed. I could have installed Linux Mint from scratch – along with all the applications I use – five times during that 10+ hour window. In terms of periodic updates – even fairly major updates moving to the next iterative version of Linux Mint – I’ve never had a Linux Mint update take more than about 4-5 minutes, even if it’s been close to a year since I last updated.

It all served as a confirmation that it was a good decision years ago to move away from Windows as a daily operating system. If anyone shares similar frustrations, and wants to know more about Linux, give me a shout.