MicrosoftHi AgnieszkaL this described the nature of Cumulative Updates (CU). All CU update packages contain all updates from previous releases.
let me go back in time:
Imagine Windows XP / 2003 you could install all updates seperately and there was no other way. Means there was 300+ of updates and they needed to be applied in the correct order. Why? Example: Update KB100000 fixed moreicons.dll and KB100001 also fixed the same DLL. Who was winning of you installed 01 first and then 00 ? Only the last one, that got installed. So Microsoft came up with cumulative updates in later OS releases avoid such issues and outlier configs, and also streamline patching and reducing footprint on disk and of updates.
So wouldn't this mean significantly larger updates over time? Yes and No.
For yes: Actually this was a huge problem with Windows Server 2016, and Windows 10 1607.
This page is our witness, have a look at the update full package sizes:
Windows 10: https://www.computerbase.de/downloads/betriebssysteme/windows-10-kumulatives-update/
Windows 11: https://www.computerbase.de/downloads/betriebssysteme/windows-11-kumulatives-update/
For no: Updates are compressed, but do not offer deduplications like WIM files do.
Also we received further improvements like UUP to reduce the size of updates, checking what bits and bytes one actually requires from an CU instead of downloading the whole package. and further more Delivery Optimization helps to reduce bandwidth for Windows Server and Windows Client.
Does this answer your question?
