Operating systems require regular patches and updates to fix coding errors, address security vulnerabilities, and add new features. Understanding OS update types, categories, and lifecycle timelines is essential for keeping systems secure and supported.
OS Updates & Lifecycle
There's times when there are issues with your operating system. There's times when there are extra features that need to be added to your operating system. There are times when we're going to want to update our operating system to get all the latest and greatest features, as well as all those security patches.
The operating system of your computer is code. Code is programs that are developed by developers, and they make mistakes. When they roll out different features and they roll out different stuff, there is errors in their code at times, and that causes problems. It causes security problems, it causes problems with the way that your computer is functioning, and so we need to be able to solve for that.
One of the biggest problems with it is that these developers are programming the core part of your computer and how your computer functions. So if you have vulnerabilities on your operating system and your drivers and your core systems, it exposes really your whole computer. So what those developers will do is they'll fix the problem and then release a patch so that way you can update your operating system and make it safe and secure again.
These fixes go by a lot of different names. They could go by a patch, a software update, bug fixes, feature pack or update, service pack, software releases, security updates. Some of these have a little different meaning, but for the most part they all mean that you're going to roll up an update to the operating system or to some sort of software on your machine.
When they roll out these different patches and updates, they usually have some sort of label or category that they put on it. It could say something like a critical update, or it's a security update. These are the updates that are most critical for your machine, to make sure that they remain secure and operating in a safe manner. There are other types of updates that are also released, and depending on what brand you're using — a lot of us are using Microsoft Windows — they'll go by these different names.
I'm on my Windows machine here, and I'm going to click on the start button and type in Windows Update and hit enter, and it pops up with this Windows Update window. It says I'm up to date as of today at 4:45 a.m., so everything's good there. I could click check for updates if I wanted to check again, but it just checked not earlier today, so we are good there. And then there's some optional updates that I might want to install, or maybe not install, so I can view those optional updates on whether I want to install them or not. It looks like there might be some driver updates. So anyways, this is the Windows Update, and where I go to find updates for my operating system and some of the software installed on this machine.
Now, the thing is, they can only do updates for so long, and they're not going to necessarily do updates for really old software, and this is the reason why. Here's some more recent stats that we have on Microsoft Windows versions and the usage out there. What we see is the most recent version that we have, Windows 11, at the time of this recording has 33.421615 62%. Windows 8.1 is just a fraction of 1%, and same thing with these other versions. Windows 7 is 2.84. Windows XP is just a fraction of a percent.
So supporting some of these old Windows when there's very little of them out there doesn't really make sense for Microsoft to do. So what they have to do is they have to have kind of a cut-off line, that we're not going to support it after a certain date because we can't afford to continue to roll out updates for these really old machines.
So what operating systems do is they have some sort of life cycle. They have a beginning, middle and end. What happens is, let's say Windows 11 is released. So we release Windows 11 and it's going to be supported during that time, but at some point in time they're going to come out with the end of life, to say that we are no longer going to sell Windows 11. And at some point in time we'll also have to stop support for it, so we're going to have an end of support. And they'll announce this pretty early in the process so that way people have time to prepare for all of these changes.
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