Microsoft is pausing Cumulative Update Preview releases for the holidays

2020 has been a difficult year for everyone, and Microsoft is looking to wind down early this year by not overstressing their developers or company admins.

In the changelog for this month’s Patch Tuesday, the company also announced that it will be skipping Preview Releases for Windows 10 in December, saying:

^{NEW 11/10/20}
IMPORTANT Because of minimal operations during the holidays and the upcoming Western new year, there won’t be any preview releases for the month of December 2020. Monthly servicing will resume with the January 2021 security releases.

Preview releases are non-security Windows 10 updates which bring minor bug fixes and improvements, released early for company system admins to test before full deployment during the regular Patch Tuesday. Microsoft defines them like this:

Preview of Monthly Rollup

A tested, cumulative set of new updates that are packaged together and distributed over Windows Update, WSUS, System Center Configuration Manager and Microsoft Update Catalog ahead of the release of the next Monthly Rollup for customers to proactively download, test, and provide feedback. The Preview of Monthly Rollup is product-specific and addresses new non-security updates, and includes fixes from the latest Monthly Rollup. This Preview of Monthly Rollup would be displayed under the title Preview of Monthly Quality Rollup when you download or install and will be classified as an “Optional” update.

The change will mean not only will Microsoft have to work a little less hard this December, but so will administrators, who would normally have to these updates, also.

via WindowsLatest