I run Arch for most of my dev work so maybe I'm just missing it, but I do a fair bit of dev/testing on windows machines and I don't EVER have this happen.

Like - Literally never in the past two years have I lost work due to auto updates.

It definitely got a lot better over the years, but it still happens sometimes. I don't know the criteria, but it is basically having some update pending install.

Automatic updates interrupting work hasn't been an issue for me for a long time.

You can set updates to install outside of an 18-hour window, defer updates for a set period, or disable them: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-stop-updates-installing-a...

Last time I used the OS disabling updates just didn't work reliably, at least not with a clear and simple setting(let's be honest, this helping link you posted should not need to exist). Deferring updates will only work for some time, until Windows 10 will just update it without warning the next time you wake it up from suspend, resetting your session with multiple reboots. This behaviour alone is inexcusable, no matter how the settings look.

Automatic updates are unacceptable for me, and that's not because I don't do updates(quite the opposite), it's just that I expect the behaviour to be predictable without nasty surprises, and with Windows 10 that became a gamble. I never knew if an update could suddenly run without my permission and wreck the OS(which happened multiple times to me, leading to some stressful weekends).

Maybe not everyone shares that opinion, but I rarely get annoyed by something more than software that tries to be smarter than the user, and automatic updates are just one part of that.

Does this actually work? I tried (permanently) disabling updates on my Surface Go (running Windows 10) a few months ago but kept failing. The worst thing is, you don't know if what you did works or not, because you need to wait until the next update :D

I've also seen user experience reports in the wild that say, “I tried those settings but I still had a forced update halfway through my Big Important Presentation”.

I haven't had that myself so far. Hate to say it works on my machine but that's been my experience to date.

Those users invariably have been blindly clicking away the update notification and have picky themselves to blame.

Clicking away the dialogue should never trigger the update. It's the opposite of what the whole UI of Windows has always worked like.

And you're wrong either way - I've had forced updates wreck Windows without seeing a single notification or update setting beforehand.

A work mandates machines with locked down control is always going to be awful. The machine in my house that is in this category gets opened every week or two for it’s mega updates, then closed until the next batch.

Agreed, the update experience for anything used occasionally or when someone else controls the update cycle is going to be miserable.

I've experienced the same with work-issued laptops, and also have an iMac I boot once every few months to be met with 20 software update nags from the OS and various apps. Probably means I should sell the iMac.

I wish Windows 10 LTSC was the base for all other Windows 10 OS versions. An expensive version that is easy to use with few distractions, does not need a full-time system administrator to run and just works.

I installed the Enterprise LTSC version on my new gaming machine and saw all the usual bullshit you'd expect from consumer-grade Windows 10.

A deceptive setup screen that asks you to create a Microsoft account (you need to use the "Domain join" button to be able to create a local admin account, there is no "local account" button by itself).

Spyware features like "personalization", advertising identifier, etc that I needed to uncheck (during the initial setup process there are at least 10 things I had to disable or say no to), also there's a subtle dark pattern going on with the button to go to the next screen, it's no longer called "Next" but "Accept" instead (even if you disable all the proposed options).

Despite the watermark on the wallpaper correctly saying "Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC" I can still only select "Basic" telemetry in the settings. I am not sure whether it's a quirk of the evaluation version or if I need to use a group policy to disable it.

You can sent your Internet connection to "metered" to stop this. I hate that you can't just outright disable forced updates, but this is the working solution that MS offers.

You can, via the registry.

Admittedly it's been a couple of years since I've used Windows 10, but at that time there was no way to disable the automatic updates. Even the registry hacks didn't work for me.