Windows 10 reaches 70% market share as Windows 11 keeps declining
Windows 10 reaches 70% market share as Windows 11 keeps declining
Statcounter reports that Windows 11 continues to lose its market share for the second month in a row. Windows 10, meanwhile, is gaining more users and is now back above the 70% mark.
Statcounter reports that Windows 11 continues to lose its market share for the second month in a row. Windows 10, meanwhile, is gaining more users and is now back above the 70% mark.
Execs: what can we do?!
Jim from marketing: We could throw ads into windows 11... That'll get em flocking! People love ads!
In my company they legitimately try to convince us that our users love ads.
I conducted user research on one of our websites, which showed complaints about the amount of ad placements we have been throwing at them. The execs responded by telling me "but we are actually HELPING them, we're showing them products that will improve their productivity and processes". Then, they came up with ideas for new ways we can place MORE ads on top of the ones already there. I'm sure our users are loving it!
On a related note, YouTube just gave me a pop-up advertising premium again, only this time the cancel button was "No, I like ads."
I was gonna sit back and watch an hour of YT (with ads) but that pop-up rubbed me the wrong way and I didn't watch anything so that I might skew the A/B test in favor of no dark patterns.
That’s it, they need to roll out ads in BIOS
Want to change your boot order?
You'll need to watch a 30 second ad, or subscribe for ad free BIOS for just 1.99/month
Sponsored product recommendations cannot be loaded without an internet connection. Please configure a wireless/ethernet adapter and connect to the internet to continue.
Nah you'll have to download a half-english app, sign up on a website you haven't heard before, request BIOS access code, wait up to a month and then you can do that
If they are gonna put advertisements in the bios then ill flash my pc with libreboot
Don't give them any ideas. They are watching the forums 😂
The funny part is that windows will change your boot order back without your consent.
Would technically be doable in UEFI.... But I'm not mad enough to bring this shit to the world
Anyone who does should be trialed for crimes against humanity.
Creating an image of this and posting it on Lemmy = guaranteed XYZ upvotes.
Who wants to do it?q
Just comment or comment with post?
Aren't there already? With vendor splash screens and all the graphics in the BIOS settings menus? Why don't I get paid every time Asrock gets to display their logo on my monitor at boot?
don't give them ideas, lol
Call down Satan.
*edit: Calm. but you know what? Call the man in red. He prolly should be taking notes.
Considering they allow to install application on the bios command (Armory Crate, that kind of shit), consider it already done.
Sounds like what happened when Windows 8 came out. Oops I meant Windows Vista. My bad, I'm thinking of Windows Me. Sorry, I might have it confused with NT 3. Everyone loved Windows 2.0 right?
8/8.1 were better than 7/10
I recently moved my media PC to Linux Mint. I had Bluetooth issues with windows despite my hardware not that old and 'Windows 11 ready'. Zero problems on Linux. I play the same games thanks to Steam Proton library. I use Mac for work. So I finally did it. No more Windows. I tried to switch 5 years ago. But today Linux is polished. And mostly works as expected. You still need to open terminal a few times to change some settings. I'm happy. Highly recommended.
I may yet try it in the next few years. I think one large frustration I anticipate (among others) is keyboard shortcuts. I've become very experienced with those on Windows, and my brief efforts at Linux (eg, on my Steam Deck's monitor hookup) have not come across enough matches for them.
I can absolutely see value in enduring the pain of a large switch though.
Linux mint keyboard shortcuts mimic those of windows tho, Linux mint is the best choice for windows refugees, this is one of the things majority of Linux community is agree about. Edit: in Linux mint you also can change keyboard shortcuts with gui tools already pre installed
Funny, one of my longstanding frustrations with windows was that I didn’t get a say in my keyboard shortcuts. Namely the fact that the shortcut to swap keyboard layouts has historically been very easy to accidentally hit.
If you ever do switch I suggest something with KDE, I love keyboard shortcuts and I find anything other(Windows the most) extremely lacking in that field.
As someone who uses all 3 (work-issue MBP, personal dev laptop on fedora 40, overbuilt gaming-oriented desktop on w10 with a dual boot Ubuntu partition I haven’t used in ages because WSL lets me do what I need to most of the time), it’s really not that bad. Then again, I’ve had a trifecta like that for well over a decade at this point, so maybe I’ve just fully acclimatized to switching machines and OSes for different primary activities all the time.
I switched from Win10 to Arch and now I do have problems with bluetooth, because my mouse officially only supports Windows. Think I will just force my mouse to support Arch (or the other way around). Still way better and faster than Windows.
Windows just sucks at handling Bluetooth. It's ridiculous that you can't change audio codecs, or choose between handsfree and high quality audio. You have to let windows guess at both
Whenever I try switching to Linux, there is always something that doesn't work right and takes forever to finagle with to fix if it's even possible. I'm primarily a Linux Mint fan (daily drove it on my aging desktop until it died of old age a few years back), but I've also dabbled in a few other noob-friendly distros like Ubuntu (was really into it when everything was still orange and brown lol) and Pop OS.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love using Linux to breathe new life into older systems, but it just isn't a good option for me personally if my device hasn't gotten sluggish yet.
As an example, I have an aging laptop that started blue screening a bunch. It doesn't support the Win 11 upgrade due to it's processor not meeting minimum specs. So I thought it was finally time to see if Linux would improve it.
First of all, I had a hell of a time installing various distros without having them boot to a black screen after installation completes. Took absolutely forever to finally sus this out on the various distros I tried. Then I find that the couple extra buttons on my basic Logitech mouse don't work. These are essential buttons for me that I use constantly. I go through a million troubleshooting steps before finding out that it's a Wayland issue, so I switch back to Xorg and everything is cool. But then I start running into lag issues which never occurred on my Windows install. I also tried playing some games I had in my Epic Games library. I could not for the life of me get it to work, no matter which platform I tried. I get that Steam has better Linux compatibility, but not all of us have all of our games on Steam.
Finally got tired of the whole ordeal and switched back to Windows. Did a bit more troubleshooting and seemed to have resolved the blue screen issues and now it seems to work perfectly and much better out of the box than Linux. It's not an old enough device a Linux refresh to be worth it yet.
I get that Lemmings are die hard Linux fans, and I think Linux has some fantastic use cases...but for many users it actually isn't a good alternative. I find it works best when you want to breathe new life into older hardware or if you have every component specifically built to work for a particular Linux distro. But when basic features don't work properly without hours of troubleshooting (if you can ever get them to work at all), it's a little hard to just recommend it to your average Joe whose Windows/Mac computer works just fine.
This "everything just works" Linux experience a lot of people talk about on Lemmy/Reddit has absolutely never been my experience, even though I've been a casual Linux fan for over a decade now. Meanwhile, I've had the opposite experience with Windows (unless you're talking really old Windows versions like Win XP and older).
This. I have dabbled with various Linux distros over the past 15+ years out of curiosity. I have, without fail, had to spend days troubleshooting and fixing various problems of all kinds. Sometimes it was WiFi drivers, sometimes it was GPU drivers, sometimes it was power management issues, and most recently it's soundcard drivers and poor audio control/quality issues. I always installed Linux as dual-boot so I had my normal Windows install to fall back on but I just couldn't see myself able to fully switch primary OS over.
Nowadays I couldn't switch over even if I wanted to because numerous programs I use for my work are not supported properly or at all. Linux has indeed come a long way over the years in terms of UX and software compatibility, but not everyone uses their computer just for games. There is a lot of creative and productivity software (and devices!) that have limited or zero Linux support and many FOSS alternatives are not sufficient. I hate Adobe as much as the next person and Photoshop is a bloated pile of trash, but part of my soul dies whenever a Linux fan tells me I can just replace Photoshop with GIMP. GIMP is clownware.
Another major issue I had was the community itself. When troubleshooting the issues I've had over the years, one big problem that kept popping back up was how toxic and condescending the Linux community can be. On more than a few occasions my requests for help on forums were met with passive aggressiveness and hostility because I "should have known better" or something along those lines. The most recent example I can think of was someone asking me to post a debug log to troubleshoot an issue I had and I had to ask him where to find the log. He told me the folder it would be in but not the folder path to get there. When I asked again where to find the log, he just told me that "maybe Linux isn't for you".
You know what? Maybe it isn't. It sure isn't for most people and I can't see that changing soon.
To comment on the first paragraph, that is just a skill issue. Before I switched to Linux I was pretty adept at Windows, but some things are hard to figure out because it's hidden behind layers of bullshit. Running commands that obscure what exactly they're doing, just because some guy on some forum said it worked for him, is how you get around on Windows and that knowledge is something you build over many years. Knowing where specific settings are or what values to use takes time. The same counts for Linux. If you stick to it, that knowledge will come with experience.
Just remember the dism and sfc scannows, registry hacks etc the average Joe doesn't know about. Your learnt it, you didn't start using Windows with that knowledge. The same will happen with Linux.
I've been exclusively Linux for years, and all the crap now going on with AI and ads being shoved into literally everything makes me happier than ever with that decision.
But you're absolutely right. Linux is "it just works" in a relatively narrow use-case.
Just going on the internet to browse and play some Facebook games (my parents). It'll absolutely work out of the box.
Doing some light creative work (design, writing, etc...) No tinkering needed.
But from there it becomes a scale from "probably work fine" to "hours of work and extra repositories needed".
Video editing or 3D modelling with an NVIDIA card because CUDA, it SHOULD be easy to install, but there's a chance it won't be. You take your chances.
Gaming through proton? Single player games, yeah. I've literally had 95% work out of the box because Valve is awesome. But I don't play online multiplayer. If you need to play nice with anticheat software, good luck.
I too get frustrated with the fundamentalist Linux base who think its the right fit for everyone. Because it absolutely is not, and its okay to admit that because admitting that drives the motivation to improve it.
I don't think Linux is for aging hardware. It just depends of your needs. Linux support all mainstream hardware, I guess. Never had any problems with something not working on Linux. I remember many years ago I had a scanner, which used to work only with Win XP or Vista because of outdated drivers. Windows 7 was too modern for it. I tried it with Linux and it worked. Now I have some random-hardware PC, everything works. It's Intel Core 11400 hardware, AMD RX-GPU, quite modern. I think problems could be on laptops with display backlight, sleep mode or something else. Desktop PC's should be good. Even if you have last-gen hardware, just use the latest kernel. I haven't heard about Linux build hardware. It used to be a thing for Hackintosh builds.
My previous company HP laptop worked better on Linux, it wasn't that hot all the time. Because Linux was consuming less system resources. My work: Browser + IDE. I had dual-boot Win10 and Ubuntu. Ended up with Windows because of Pulse Secure crap and some specific network restrictions. It was years back.
I remember I gave up with Ubuntu 5 years ago at home because after system update It just failed to boot. I didn't touch anything. I don't know if it's possible today. And Proton wasn't here and I wanted to play games. I remember I was using Lightroom, but for my very basic photographer needs Darktable works perfectly. And it's free!
All you need is basic troubleshooting skills. You need to google sometimes. I know that it could be an issue. Linux not for everyone. And it's fine. It's good to have a chose. Linux gives that choice.
Yeah, on Windows Heroes of the Storm was using 10gb on my gpu and stuttering massively
On Linux (Lutris) it just works
Hey fellow HoTS Linuxer!
I switched recently to Nobara after having a great experience with my steam deck. However, I'll probably add windows as a dual boot option since CS2 doesn't run properly (like 16fps..).
I just got a steam deck, and needed to install FF14 (non steam) so I was mucking around in desktop mode… yeah. I’ll prob be getting a spare drive for my tower now to try out Linux. I’d love nothing more then to cut ties to windows.
Yeah in college I tried to switch for nerd cred and it sucked, but over the past year I switched and while I’ve had some hiccups, I honestly think it’s more a result of me going with an arch based distro than a Debian one. I’m thinking I may hop soon, but I assume it’ll be a massive pain
I work with Windows as a requirement of my job, I'm in IT and I'm constantly in and out of the bowels of the operating system. I have a lot of thoughts on this stuff.
My first thought is, stop moving everything around. Even in Windows 10, if you're using an older version, say 1804, and you switch to a newer version, say 22H2, stuff is moved all over the place. It makes it super hard to direct someone blindly to the control they need to click to get something done. You're making my job much harder than it needs to be. Stop it. There's no reason to move this crap around.
To bring out my grumpy old man routine: back in my day, if you wanted to do anything, you went to the control panel. Everything you needed was there. Now it's in settings, no wait, clicking on this settings option for that thing now launches an appx thing that, surprisingly (/s) is broken.
Too many damn times have I tried to open their damned settings app or the new defender security appx dialog simply crashes. The solution is almost always dkim online repair. Well, if it needs repair so damn much, how about you just repair it for me as part of system maintenance? The fuck.
Windows 11 is a special form of suffering. Right clicking on a file and.... What the fuck is this? I basically click on "more settings" every time I right click. And the changes to the settings application.... Don't get me started.
Also, why in the fuck do we have copilot installed by default now? You're an operating system, stay in your goddamned lane.
The only good thing I can say about Windows 11 is that it has really good security. So good that I frequently have trouble doing routine things. Today, I was trying to run a PowerShell script and it told me some bullshit error, which is pretty common for PowerShell. After googling the error, the recommendation was to change the execution policy. I went to do that at an administrative PowerShell prompt and it told me that I didn't have access to change it. While running as the administrator. Yay. Shit is broken again. Fuck me I guess. I'm off to unfuck my less than five month old new work system because Microsoft can't get their shit straight.
Customization options do not and cannot help me. 90% of the time I'm working on someone else's computer, so I have to fucking deal with the default behavior because I'm not going to change it for 500+ users whom I support. I'm pretty sure I'd get more than a few complaints. So I have to fucking deal with whatever hairbrained decision Microsoft made about what should be default.
Windows 10 had its own share of bullshit. One of my most common annoyances was the way the OS decided to install fucking candy crush, every fucking time a new user logged into the goddamned computer. It's like playing whack-a-mole, but not fun and filled with uninstalls. I hope Microsoft made some good money on that brand deal, because I sure paid for it with my frustration.
After all of this, I keep finding myself in the fucking registry, and thank God that's one thing that hasn't been fucked over by their new UI team. I keep having to fix dumb issues by injecting registry keys so I can not deal with the stupid UI all the goddamned time. It's hacky, and I'm happier for it.
I could keep going. Pretty much every decision they've made in the past 5 years has been some measure of bad. The only thing I've agreed with them doing is finally ending internet explorer. Begrudgingly, edge is better, but not by a lot, IMO.
The last thing I'll say is that the tpm bullshit is going to give me an aneurysm. Having a TPM at Windows install usually prompts the system to activate bitlocker. Bitlocker itself isn't bad, but it's fucking terrible when windows does this shit and doesn't really inform the user about it. Nobody knows that they need to back up their goddamned bitlocker recovery keys, so inevitably, when something goes wrong (we're talking about Windows here, something will go wrong) and the system stops booting, you need the fucking bitlocker recovery key to do anything. Your option, if you can call it that, if you can't get the recovery key, is to format all of your shit, and reinstall from scratch. I know several people who have lost a lot of work and irreplaceable files, like pictures, because bitlocker fucked them over and they had no idea it was even running.
Sorry about your loss, but all those family photos you saved that don't exist anywhere else are locked behind basically uncrackable encryption, get fucked, I guess.
I'm going to cut this rant off. Needless to say I'm pretty tired of Microsoft's bullshit. Make an operating system. That's what people want. That's it. We shouldn't need "debloat" scripts to fix your nonsense. Gah.
This 100%
Windows is in a permanent state of shitification, it feels to be like they have sales driving development. Every year Windows applications make more and more stupid fucking decisions with how stuff functions. You can't target a specific folder to save a word doc without 5 clicks to get to the fucking file explorer. You now left click to fix spelling instead of right click in outlook. None of this shit makes sense. They keep fucking around with how stuff operates for seemingly no rhyme or reason and all it's doing is pissing off seasoned users. I know the devs aren't this fucking brain dead which is how I get to "sales must be driving" mentality. Because sales people tend the be the worst fucking people to make decisions on shit,they're good at charming people, they should stick to that.
Agreed.
I could not give any fucks if they want to cram this shit into the crap home version. I don't use it and anyone who does, probably would rather have a more inexpensive version that's been subsidized by all the crap they've piled into the OS. Sure. Whatever.
But this crap is present in the professional, and enterprise versions, this shit still persists. Like, these are versions that are twice or three times as expensive and still, full of shit; just as bad as the cheap home version.
Unacceptable.
The constant stupid UI changes are just icing on this shit filled cake. Why are we moving everything around? Sure, you want to create a less "ugly" control panel, ok that's fine, but why the fuck did you make it borderline impossible to do something as simple as change your network IP address? I don't even try anymore, I just go find the og control panel and load up network and sharing center or something. If you're going to change it, at least make it as functional as the old one, or don't fucking do it at all.
I very much enjoyed your rant. Would subscribe.
I recently had to reinstall windows on a coworker's laptop because it wouldn't boot (hard drive is probably failing). I couldn't even format the drive because bitlocker was bit locking and the only way to turn it off is through the control panel (again, PC would not boot). I ended up having to delete the entire partition so I could reformat and install.
I usually do that anyways. As soon as it's like, "which partition do you want to install to?" I'm like, nope! And delete all the partitions. Just install to the drive.
The windows installer is so removed with this kind of thing that I make it basically impossible to do wrong. If I have another drive in the system, I unplug it before I install windows, then plug it back in after windows is installed. I want it to see one drive and only one drive and I want it to install to that drive and nothing else. Not a partition, not a specific location, just the drive.
Idk if you love or hate windows but I hope your job switches to linux for your sanity lol I would be going crazy. Just reading your rant gave me anxiety
I appreciate that. I don't think my users would tolerate Linux. Maybe MacOS, but I would quit if that happened.
Windows has some very terrible traits, but it's something I've worked with and on for the last ~20 years. I see all the warts. I have no delusions about it, but it's something I know extremely well as a result.
I like how the settings for daylight savings just fucking disappeared on my kid's laptop and I had to edit the registry to get the setting to show up and correct the time.
Oh. I have one for this. I support people from several timezones, so to help myself, I set up a couple of additional clocks in Windows, so I could keep track of what time it is for the user, since most people are bad at thinking outside of their local timezone.
Well, I'm in a timezone that uses DST, and when it started for my timezone this year, all of my clocks changed. Every last one of them are now wrong, since the actual timezones they are for don't do DST.
Gg windows.
I'm gonna upgrade my setup at some point, so thanks for this. I didn't realize they had some bullshit like bitlocker in there, definitely going to disable that because I cannot lose some files.
I try to speak the gospel of backing up your bitlocker recovery key to anyone who will listen without their eyes glazing over.
You can turn it off, if you're okay with going without encryption; if it's a mobile computer, like a laptop or something, encryption is a good idea, so just back up the key in a safe place, even just emailing it to yourself and you're all set.
The bullshit is that the bitlocker dialog won't save a file that contains your recovery key, to the drive that's encrypted; my recommendation is to "print" it to a PDF, which you can save anywhere you want. Once you have it, attach it to an email and send it to yourself, or toss it in your Google drive or whatever.
Full disk encryption is, IMO, a great thing to have, but to rugpull people by just enabling it and not giving them the information to secure access to their data, or even really inform them that it's on, is complete fucking horse shit.
I went back from Windows 11 to Windows 10 as 11 was too buggy on my system (maybe because I bypassed some checks for TPM because my motherboard was too old).
I cannot understand at all this move from control panel to settings thats half baked in 10 and presumably even worse in 11. It’s not an improvement and makes things difficult to find
The only improvement I can find with the windows 11 settings is account administration. Linking to a Microsoft account or adding authentication methods or something, is pretty decent. Everything else, just makes me want to tear my head off of my body and throw it across the room.
I switched my four home computers to Linux Mint this week. Windows is just more trouble than it's worth nowadays.
Same, its just like everywhere enshitification of companies who try to get more profitable by spying,advertising and many anti consumer practices. Linux just stays good. and / or if you dont like your distribution just swap to another, its easy :D
Just so we're clear, the data in the headline refers to the share of Windows editions among Windows users. By their count Windows actually went up slightly in the overall Desktop OS share last month, while Linux remains basically flat at 4%.
Windows is just more trouble than it's worth nowadays.
To be fair that's exactly how Microsoft management feels. For half a decade now Microsoft is a company that sells Linux and opensource judging by their yearly reports, other departments either don't grow nearly as fast or are just straight detrimental. So they do want you to dump that shit, preferably gaining some cash before it happens naturally.
Windows 10 is pretty crappy but tolerable, everything I've seen about 11 suggests it's a utter shit show.
I really don't have any issues with it, but I debloated it as soon as I got it.
I heard it’s pretty good with the bloat stripped. Honestly, if I’m going to start modifying my system I decided I’d rather have an OS that supports it properly.
More power to you though!
Same, but I run a "pro" version that I acquired from work like a decade ago.
I’m from Eastern EU but work in Germany in English. As I grew up with my native language’s keyboard, I always set that up, but turn the display language to English.
Worked fine in 10, but with the new 11 work laptops most things are indeed English, some apps are in my native language, and some in German. And a few days ago, lock screen stock photos started appearing (instead of the company’s logo as before), with quotes in my native language. All because I want to use a specific keyboard.
Based on searching, this is a known problem, win 11 languages are a mess, and no way to fix without resetting settings and reinstalling some things, for which I would need to leave my computer with corpo IT.
American software is terrible at handling multi lingual users, aka people outside the US. Web browsers and Google services suffer from similar problems, but the random quotes in the lock screen are certainly something new to me.
I have windows 11, and with startallback and directory opus both of which I had on 10) it's indistinguishable from 10. No benefits, no drawbacks. Honestly should have saved the trouble and not installed.
Starting to think MSFT are no longer targeting users that care about that stuff. They’re going after the ignorant/complacent/corporate. I think they realized the rest of us were a lost cause as soon as Linux was remotely an option.
I switched from 10 to 11 about a year or two ago and haven’t really had much issue with it. It was mostly a seamless switch, much less trouble than any other Windows transition, apart from something with the taskbar I remember being stupid, but I found some third party software that fixed it. I’d love to hate on MS, but I’m just sort of mildly ok with it. Even Copilot being added in to the sidebar is whatever, I’ve found some random needs for it here and there. As long as it doesn’t go snooping through my computer and report my mountain of illicit mighty morphin power ranger hentai, I should be ok.
I honestly don't even distinguish 10 from 11. For me, both are not acceptable on my machine, both have to be fought during daily use. Most problems of 11 originated in 10 and were already too severe.
After trying Windows 11 for a while, I just gave up and installed Kubuntu on my computer. I still use a Windows VM for some things, but I make sure to firewall the shit out of it lol
One very important detail missing here is that Windows 10 is going to be end-of-support in 2025. You won't get security updates.
It is going to be shitshow.
It's not going to be a shitshow at all. Business will mostly move to 11 whether they like it or not and consumers will just use unpatched win10. The exact same way they did with XP and the exact same way they did with 7.
It's only gonna be a shitshow if there is some earth shattering vulnerability found that a worm can exploit and even then MS would probably just push out an out of band update.
This is honestly going to be a "nothingburger."
I have lived the time when unpatched windows was the norm. Oh the network worms which roamed freely and created huge bot nets. Sad that Microsoft has forgotten that.
2025 is going to be the biggest year of Linux
I think there'll be some users but honestly? I think you'll have three general kinds of users. Those that just bite the bullet and upgrade to 11, those that don't care and will continue to use Win10 for more years to come, and the minority that care enough to try this "Linux thing" out.
2025 is going be the year of cheap hardware. A lot of people will just buy new computers/laptop's.
I'm helping some people already with setting up Linux. But most average users will not set up Linux. It's just to scary.
Yes, I think a minority group of IT enthousiasts will be pushed towards Linux. But for a lot of average users, it is way too much of a hassle, unless the ONLY thing they do is browse the web.
In my 4 weeks with Mint, I encountered: -Complete system freezes from plugging in USB to USB hubs. -Bluetooth not working (fix was updating to a newer Kernel... ok... why is that kernel not standard when bluetooth is broken on the older kernels?) -Random inconsistant UI scaling issues when working with two monitors (and even on the same monitor) -permission issues when instaling flatpacks from the software manager (let's disable USB permission for arduino... yeah... that's silly)
I figure all the shit out because I want it to work. But it's not the be-all end-all that people here on Lemmy make it out to be.
Switching an OS is always difficult. In 2006 I switched to Mac for about 6 years. The first few months were pain and agony. After that, it was great. Same with many Windows upgrades. And the same will be true for switching to Linux.
Not if we all keep using it as a form of protest.
I started dual booting to Arch Linux and more often than not I boot more now into Linux than Windows 11. I've used Windows since 3.11. Microsoft really have fucked Windows recently.
Windows updates used to be seen as upgrades. I remember getting Win95 to run on my 386 with 8MB of RAM (which my buddy said wouldn't be able to handle it). I was so stoked to have it working because 95 had so many improvements over 3.1. Of course each release had its issues but after some service packs they were usually pretty good.
Maybe it started with Windows ME, but it definitely was in full effect by Vista, where new releases became downgrades. XP was the last great version, when I had to move on from that everything started getting much worse UX-wise.
7 was definitely an upgrade to vista, and 10 was an upgrade to 8, but that's just comparing shit and smelly shit
Inb4 microsoft is forced to bring back support for windows 10. Seems nobody believes in innovation anymore since all it means now is AI „helping” you with tasks you could do yourself or ads everywhere you look.
Same shit going on everywhere. I recently fixed my iphone 12 pro because upgrading by three generations literally would get me a usb-c port and an additional fucking button.
I genuinely think Microsoft won't extend anything for Win10 unfortunately, no matter how many users cling to it. I'd love to be eating my words here, but I think Microsoft would rather pull all the marketing tricks out the book to force everyone into Win11.
The same thing happened with Windows 7 and XP. People will still with EOL 10 until their current machine dies. A few people might choose to explore other options, but for the average Joe not getting updates seems like a good thing, because the computer will stop rebooting over night or taking several mintss to boot post patch. Of course they don't think about the security implications, but that is true about most people in most cases.
I don’t think they’ll extend it, but I’m predicting that there will be some massive bug or security issue found in Windows 10 after its support has ended, and Microsoft will be forced to create an update for it since Windows 10 will retain such high market share.
Not sure why so many companies are so focused on making a miserable user experience these days. I know it’s mainly about appeasing shareholders, but it feels like there should be a few more long-sighted people in the mix who can see this backfire in the end.
I’d love to be eating my words here, but I think Microsoft would rather pull all the marketing tricks out the book to force everyone into Win11.
What confuses me is their weird TPM and whatever else requirements. I have a decent system, but it doesn't support Windows 11 (thank the gods), so what is their plan for people like me exactly? Like I'm going to replace my motherboard and CPU just to use windows 11? This feels like multiple parts of Microsoft fighting each other.
I'd love to be eating my words here, but I think Microsoft would rather pull all the marketing tricks out the book to force everyone into Win11
Windows is not what Microsoft gains profit from, they clearly say that in their yearly reports for like a decade. They don't want you to upgrade to Win11, that's why they set the upgrade requirements. They don't want to make Windows, they want to sell cloud Linux and other opensource because it brings money and raises stock value. They want you to drop Windows without any lawsuits against them. Preferably gaining some ads money before you do.
Microsloth doesnt care though. They will continue ramming 11 down your throats
I remember i had to go from xp to 7 back in the day because of their Frameworks such as directx and .net because new games/apps just didn't launched without new versions of them, i bet they'll repeat this once more to push everyone. edit: to Linux
yeah i hated that move. XP was so much better than 7. they went really bland, moved all the most useful quick controls, started the process of destroying the control panel... ugh
Looks like Microsoft needs to further enhance the consumer experience by adding more personalized product recommendations, that'll fix it right up!
You mean ads. Just call em ads
"Solution" is to break Windows 10
I hope they do. I would laugh very hard.
Isn't that literally their road map? It's supposed to be end of life shortly
End of life ≠ breaking it. It will continue working as long as Microsoft doesn't touch it and apps support it.
Well, win10 is going End-of-life next year.
Whatever happened to windows 10 being the last windows? Like windows was moving to the os as a service model.
It did though, you aren't paying for 11.
Just paying for a whole new computer required for compability with 11.
Fair enough. It just was funny to me that they were so adamant about it when windows 10 launched.
You cheeky bastard
Apparently Microsoft didn't get the memo :-)
What's an OS as a service model?
You pay a subscription for support, kind of like with RedHat or SUSE. Or with Office 365, if you want something more consumer-oriented.
There wouldn't be major releases of the OS, just continual improvements as long as you keep paying. So instead of paying $100-150 every 5 years or whatever, you'd pay $20-50 every year.
Okay, this seemed wrong. As the article said, even Win8 didn't go down in usage over time. So I went and checked the methodology for the source data.
Turns out, this number is based on social media and search engine referral data. Also turns out, they warn that while they do track Bing chat referrals when you follow through a link, they don't see chat responses where you only read the AI response but don't click through:
We have no way of measuring the number of queries performed in bing chat. However, we also don't measure the number of queries to regular search engines like bing or google either. Instead we track search engine referrals.
i.e. If you go to a search engine and do a search for anything and you click on a website result, we'll record that click as a search engine referral if that website had the statcounter code installed. It's the click to a website that we measure, not the actual search queries that were performed.
When you do a search using bing chat, and you click on one of the "learn more" websites we can track that as a search referral. So we are monitoring bing chat in the same way we measure the regular bing search engine.
From this data we can see from the statcounter network of webites, that the amount of traffic being sent to websites from bing chat is very, very small. Less than 1/100 of 1 percent.
So from our data we can say that bing chat is not currently translating into enough clicks to our network of websites to change the search share.
Of course you are less likely to click on a source website from bing chat than a regular search, as it is intended to give you the answer rather than have you go visiting websites to find the answer. So that needs to be factored in when using our stats for your analysis.
That is very interesting. That's a likely culprit for Win11 specifically to have gone down a couple of percentage points in the US and EU (the other territories seem to remain flat), but it's hard to prove.
It's also a bit concerning in terms of measuring the effects of AI search in both network traffic and in how search results are consumed. If that's the cause it does suggest that AI chat users are less likely to follow through to the source info, which seems risky, although it's also hard to prove what that does to receiving truthful info.
Lots of counterintutitive, hard to parse implications from this one data point, but I'd be surprised if it was as simple as "people have randomly decided to roll back to Win10 (and Win8, which also grows) for no reason".
I think we just need to move on from this methodology of data collection. Firefox is often cited as very unpopular because it blocks statcounter tracking by default, social networks have absorbed some search volume too. I do think it makes logical sense that people are dropping 11; I did so myself last year. But this data is likely bad, so it's pointless to try and extract a reason based on it.
Well, a data point is a data point is a data point. You just can't make all your decisions based on a single one, at least without understanding what's behind it.
FWIW, the Steam survey has Win 11 growing by 3.5% last month, with Win10 going down by about the same amount (Linux stays at 1.9% there). Neither data source is wrong or bad, necessarily, but you do want to be aware that one is an opt-in survey of gamers and the other is a tracker of search engine referrals.
So the takeaway is that people are probably not deserting Win 11 in droves, but maaaybe their use of online search is being impacted by MS's integration of AI search or something else changing Win11 users' behavior around social media or search engines. Or mostly that it may be too early to tell and we may need more sources of info. For all the glee and schadenfreude in this thread, the big teachable moment is that data and stats are nuanced and hard to read and that confirmation bias is a removed.
Steam hardware survey is another data point.
Looks like in March Win10 usage increases a little. Overall it's on a downward trend though.
So for all people that are on the fence about switching to Linux: Here's a sort of review and starter guide from a guy who switched to Mint about 4 weeks ago.
Are you someone who mostly plays non-competetive games (games without anticheat) and browse the web? You'll probably have a hassle free life on Linux. Steam's Proton layer does a lot of heavily lifting. Even if games are not officially supported. Turn the compatability on in the steam settings.
If you play VR or competetive games, it's a different story. VR is dependant on the headset. I unfortunately have all Oculus Headsets, which there is no good controller support for right now from the open source community. Anticheat simply doesnt work on Linux.
Design software From what I've read, the affinity suite now can be used through Wine (a program that lets you use windows apps on Linux) However, from my time with Wine, it is hit and miss. One update from either the application or Wine can break everything. So it is not reliable, unless you freeze all updates from both the application and Wine. Wine can be great (working out of the box) but also the biggest pain in the ass with hours of debugging. Stay away if you dislike troubleshooting.
Inkscape can be an alternative to Illustrator if you don't do heavy design work.
I haven't touched Gimp for about 6 years (used to be my main editor) but when I switched to photoshop it qas no competition. Don't know what the state of Gimp is now, will try it over the coming year.
music software Cubase or any of steinbergs plugins outright will not work on Linux (unfortunately my main DAW) However, I will probably switch to Bitwig (native Linux), which looks really promising. I got some VSTs working through Wine (all arturia stuff works great) but have had hours of troubleshooting without luck with others. Use Yabridge as a vstlink for windows VSTs. If you're a professional musician with thousands of dollars in plugins, I'd be hestitant to switch to Linux. You'll be dependant on Wine a lot, which is kind of a pain to rely on for professional use.
overall tips Might be a bit controversial, but if you're a novice: don't dump all the solutions you find online in your terminal. Actually, try to use the machine as much as possible like you normally would on Windows, unless you want to do Terminal stuff. If you dislike terminals, you'll only be frustrated by all the terminal advice people give you, which might even break stuff on your machine.
Try to download .deb packages from the official sources.++ Software center on Mint is great, but will moatly be outdated or flatpacks. Flatpacks can work, but I've had many issues with permissions and flatpacks (like an arduino flatpack that didn't give permission to use the USB port....)
Welp, I'm out of time, so I'll just randomly stop my reviewish/comment here
Losing Ableton and all my VSTs are dealbreakers with Linux for me. Would be fine with the games I play, being all mostly single player indies. I could relearn a new video editing software, and I assume Citrix will work fine for all my work programs, but maaaan I’m not losing my favorite VSTs.
About anticheat: it depends which games you're playing. If they use Valve's EasyAnti Cheat you should have no problem (been playing dota2, cs2, csgo... without trouble for some time now). If they use
malwarekernel-level anticheat (iirc helldivers 2, valorant, league of legends) you won't be able to run them in linux and should keep a windows dual boot.Some kernel anticheats work too, I had no issues playing Helldivers and Hell Let Loose, both of which use EAC. Developers have to enable Linux support, which AFAIK is just one checkbox, so you still get games that don't allow it (like EVE Vanguard), but most of them are OK.
League and Valorant is a different story, those don't work.
Games that use Vanguard don't work afaik, but Helldivers 2 works just fine via Proton.
Helldivers 2 works on Linux.
Good to know!
Anticheats can work on linux given the developers have enabled it. For example brawlhalla has EAC but you can still play it
Helldivers 2's AC works also
Never rely on Wine, both in Linux, and in the real world.
Haha agreed.
Affinity Suite through Wine would be pretty big. Do you know if it's only the newest version that's "working"?
I got my info from the Affinity Forum
No first hand experience. However, with my short time with Wine, I'm hestitant to rely on it. Any update from either Wine or the software it's running could break things. Cool if it works, but not something I'd want to bet my work on.
Also in terms of games...I know Steam compatibility is supposed to be great, but if you use other platforms, you might run into some issues. Most of my library is in the Epic Games store (I know, terrible to admit this online...but they give you a lot of free shit), and I just could not get it to work at all the last time I tried Linux (maybe 6ish months ago).
I think for that usecase, Lutris might help. It is basically Wine for games, where it tries to find the right settings for your specific games. If the Epic store installs at all, that is.
But I've commented this a few times now: Wine is... very hit and miss and might not be worth your time.
You can change flatpak permissions with flatseal (you'll need to install it). A lot of them have absolutely braindead defaults It's really not great to get in the habit of installing random debs from the Internet. Aside from being a massive security issue, you'll never get updates. If mint repos don't get updated though, I suppose that's the easiest workaround
Thanks for the heads up about flatpaks! I'll look into it.
I believe debs are installed through my Software Manager ? When I said "get debs from official source" I meant that bigger software like Godot, Steam, Handbrake etc I prefer to download from their official website. Most stuff in software managers are several versions behind.
I agree that you shouldn't be downloading random debs for some small apps made by a random person, for obvious security reasons.
I would highly advice against using Wine. It requires constant root access, just like virus scanners, making your system vulnerable.EDIT: I was wrong :)I want to make the switch as win10 moved to 11 without asking and 11 sucks donkey balls. It even has ads as notifications, soon it will have ads in the start menu (not that I use it, but wtf Microsoft!). The games are no issue anymore now a days, so that's fine with me. I just don't want to switch DAW. I just got a work flow using ableton for recording, editing and mastering my dawless setup. Kind of same story with photoshop, used to the work flow and don't want to switch. Other than that, I don't see a reason why not. So maybe it's going to be a multiboot. I'm definitely going back to win10 but support will stop next year or so, so I have to use Linux by than anyway.
I think you're mistaken there.
Wine is a vanilla Linux executable that runs as the user who launched it. The Windows program it runs thus also runs under that user. That's possible because Wine doesn't do anything system-wide (like intercepting calls or anything), it already gave the process its own version of i.e.
LoadLibrary()(the Windows API function to load a DLL) and can happily remap any loaded DLL to Wine's reimplementation of said DLL as needed.Here are, for example, the processes created when I run Paint Shop Pro on my system (the leftmost column indicates the user each process is running as):
Also, some advice from WineHQ:
I would highly advice against using Wine. It requires constant root access, just like virus scanners, making your system vulnerable.
This can't be right. Was it maybe a particular workflow you used that required root access? I know I've used wine as part of Steam's Proton as well as via Lutris and neither app has ever requested privilege escalation. I've also run
winemanually from the terminal also without being root.I would say: don't rely on Wine if you're dependent on the programs it runs somehow. If you don't want to spend hours troubleshooting programs, then accept your losses.
After days of messing about getting music VSTs to work, I decided to stop troubleshooting any error I have within Wine. If a program works with Wine straight away: lucky me! If something doesn't work: I count my loss and accept I won't be able to use that program on Linux for now.
And obviously, don't install and run andom programs that you wouldn't install on Windows either. But that's just common sense.
How many % of these 70% can't upgrade to windows 11 due to hardware limitation?
Probably a fair share. The hardware requirements aren’t unreasonably high but a lot of people (like myself) are running hardware that is 10+ years old because why not? Still works fine, if you don’t need that much power.
Not that I’d run Win 11 anyways. Tried it, was a pretty but nonfunctional mess, downgraded to 10 at first and upgraded to Linux later.
That's me. I have a pretty decent computer but it can't run win11. Ill be buggered if I'm getting a new PC just to make win11 run
I'm in this boat. My current setup's motherboard is from just before TPM and SecureBoot were around.
Likewise
Plus one.
Win 11 has a bunch of new small frustrations without anything crazy good that makes me want to recommend it over 10. It's... Just really unclear what benefits I'm actually getting from 11.
Just really unclear what benefits I'm actually getting from 11.
Better access to ads and improved data gathering!
Oh wait, you're looking for benefits for the user? Umm... Security updates that will protect you from the vulnerability in Windows 10 that will get leaked as soon as it is no longer supported.
I think this is the best assessment I've read yet of Windows 11. I just switched the OS on my work computer with a fresh install of Windows 11 and have run into a handful of issues and frustrations. This thing has been out for like 3 years now. It shouldn't still be this problematic. I may end up switching to a long-term support version of Windows 10 that goes to 2027 or 2029. Unfortunately that's only available for Enterprise editions, so I can't do the same at home. I'm soon going to be dual- and triple-booting Linux at home.
There's one feature that win11 has over win10 that I wish was there, and that's the default layout manager is superior to windows 10's, and less fidgety and better hotkeys than what's offered with Power Toys. Especially vertical monitor support, which win10s layout manager never got an update for. And as a Tie-Fighter monitor setup user (4k portrait, WQHD landscape, 4k portrait) having an effective layout manager is crucial.
However, there's 3rdParty layout managers that are even better than the win11 implementation. Butt to be able to get the default support of an effective layout manager is quite nice.
That said, that's the only feature I really like aside from some nominal improvements/optimizations to background systems (network stack, Bluetooth management, "game mode") and services. That's not enough for me to transition when there's so many other things that were done to make it a worse experince.
I'm excited to transition my personal desktop to PopOS once win10 reaches EoL. Maybe Valve will drop their latest SteamOS in time for the Win10 EoL hoping to attract all those gamers on non-TPM 2.0 supported systems that are still great gaming rigs. I know I'd at least give it a go.
If you have an HDR monitor, then 11 is worth upgrading to. AutoHDR makes things so easy; it just works. No need to even bother with calibrating anything; no need to worry about switching it off when going back to SDR content, either. All you gotta do is flip the "Use HDR" switch, set HDR tone mapping to "Auto" on your monitor, and then forget about it. That's it, couldn't be easier.
Meanwhile in 10, I have to turn off HDR every time I go back to SDR content, and in KDE, HDR doesn't even work properly yet on my LG C1. Neither issue exists in 11. HDR just works.
I’ve got Windows 11 on my work laptop and the only 2 benefits I’ve seen are notepad now has tabs and auto save, and snipping tool can now record videos. On the downsides the new start menu is so shit I only ever use it for search now, which is also shit (it frequently misses the first few letters when I press the windows key and start typing), and the new right click menu is annoying.
The most annoying thing about Lemmy is all the Linux bros crawling out of their holes when the word "windows" is mentioned.
Why? Do you feel like you are team Microsoft and anyone suggesting you could have a better experience on another operating system is the enemy?
It seems that permanent obsolescence is beginning to cost too much for the users. I hope they will all keep dragging their feet, but will be a tough fight because friendly providers of professional tools will keep releasing the new versions only for Windows 11, eventually they will force some to upgrade.
My office is currently forcing us on to Win 11.
Feels bad man.
Does your office have a choice or have they been caught in the permanent obsolescence game? Often one single professional app that provides new versions only for W11 does the trick.
We're a Microsoft shop, so we've been flies caught in the ointment since day one. I wish it was one app. We're all in - Teams, Office, Visual Studio, Outlook, the works.
I'd say I don't really understand the rush, but we were supposed to be live with Win11 last year. I guess in this particular case, my office's dysfunction has worked in my favor.
Hope you enjoy combined tasks in your taskbar...
I think we have 2 deploys Windows 11 machines. I assume the boss had a personal vendetta.
It's better than being stuck on a version of windows that slowly drifts further away from the last security update it recived. I wonder how many companies out there don't pay for support but don't upgrade.
I've been using Windows since version 3.1. My rig isn't cutting edge but is still plenty good, so naturally it isn't supported for an upgrade to 11. The AI spyware in 11 is just another reason not to switch to it even if I could. Once 10 hits end of life, I'm putting Mint on it.
Same, although I may not wait that long, I'm looking at a new PC build and I can't justify a Windows OS nowadays, particularly since Steam on LInux is working relatively well for the (admittedly modest) games I like to play.
Windows 11 upgrade strategy was basically like
Microsoft: Hey gurl let's go out, I got a new whip!
You: ...okay, where we going?
Microsoft: uh, girlfriend. Nowhere. Look at you! Come on, we gotta get you looking ready to go out.
...oh no. Oh no, girl. This won't do it all. Call me when you get a nice outfit, k? Bye!
(Later)
Microsoft: 😢 why don't my friends answer my texts?
I honestly have zero problems with W11.
This being said I only run it on my gaming PC. My laptop runs Linux and I like that better. Honestly most people can switch their gaming rigs to Linux as well. I've tried it, it's very good. I've got some elgato products which I wanna keep alive, fuck with VR a little, and freetrack is not available yet which is the real deal-breaker for me.
I played most games on Linux no problem though and it was great.
I think I've had just one issue with Linux gaming, and it was made worse by me trying to troubleshoot the error, when restarting the game for the first launch solved it out right. It was a, "have you turned it off and on again?" situations. Otherwise, everything has ran well, installed well, and was pretty seamless. All of that while running Nvidia, which is the biggest surprise.
So glad my job allows me to use Linux as my OS. I do IT, and everybody else in the company uses Windows.
Constant problems, brutal driver issues, OS crashes and lockups, software installation failures, hardware incompatibility problems, it's awful.
Linux at work, Linux at home, such an improved experience.
I'll still always love XP though, the last OS from Microsoft that felt like it had a soul.
I literally haven't had ANY of those problems running Windows 10 or 11 FWIW, not have any of my friends or relatives.
I'm not anti-Linux or anything though, have used it for 26 years now, but only briefly on the desktop.
I'm happy for you, I wouldn't wish it on people, it sucks.
Work laptops in particular suck, I find. My first one was lagging, freezing, and crashing within months. The second one is three times as expensive but the same brand and is still not happy.
I also use Windows at home and haven't had the same experience. I think it's really manufacturer dependent
Hmm... I wonder why Linux has yet to rise.
I mean, we only have like 17 months until support for Windows 10 ends, it's not like it's that long.
I'm thinking real hard about making my next system Mint...
I would absolutely recommend it! It works very well and with the cinnamon version it comes with many cool apps that I would never call bloat. (I never knew that I could watch live TV via internet, thanks Hypnotix!). My biggest issues were the Nvidia drivers for gaming, but I only needed to press 5 buttons to install the proprietary ones, and with Proton all of my games ran just fine. Except for the VR games. That is the only reason why I still keep that other OS on my disk.
I'm gonna start with a baby step. I want to set up a mini pc for my living room streaming. I'm thinking I'll do Linux on it and dip my toe in the water that way, eventually I'll transition to Linux on my main pc too once I get the hang of it. Most of what I do is online or open source so Im not locked to programs. It's mostly games atm, a couple of which won't run on Linux, league of legends is one if they go ahead with vanguard. I'll either set up a completely separate mini pc to only play league or quit.
Same here. I'm going to be testing Mint and PopOS! soon.
I'm thinking the same thing with KDE Neon. Idk, Mint just feels WAY too similar to Windows. I get some people like that, but I don't wanna be reminded of something inferior.
Good luck with your mint.
It has. For the first time, it's risen to over 4% of market share of desktops: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/03/linux-continues-growing-market-share-reaches-4-of-desktops/
Of course this doesn't count Android or Chromebooks, both of which run Linux on some level.
That's a win.
I've been thinking on switching to linux on my laptop but I keep reading on the worse battery life on linux.
You should try booting to a live USB stick. Then you can check how the performance compares on your hardware, without any permanent changes.
Eh, my lappy has terrible battery life regardless of what OS is running on it, and even then, I always use it plugged it anyway, exactly like Strong Bad (it's why I used the word "Lappy")
It will major corporate and legislative backing to even attempt one. For many end users the desktop pc, if they ever have one, is yet another techie stuff they don't want to bother themselves with. You don't simply get them to install a new program, let alone an entirely new operating system. Some do make the leap, however.
You are correct. This is what MS is counting on. Usability is something MS saw as unnecessary (just a cost) back in the '90s, and instead counting on the ubiquitous nature of windows and the office suite to dominate the market. It will be a quite the hurdle to overcome for any competing operating systems.
You mean consumers DON'T want ads in every aspect of their OS?
Microsoft's own incompetence has made Windows 11 a failure. The system requirements really made it a flop (possibly an intentional part of their plan to boost hardware sales but create a ton of e-waste as a result). I'm running Windows 11 as my PC meets the specs, it's not a bad OS persay as it works for my day to day needs. However, if I didn't game on PC I would probably switch completely to Linux. I stay on Windows as it is for the time being convenient to do so. If the next version of Windows has a dire increase in regards to specifications...I would likely go back to Ubuntu!
You should check protondb and see if your games of choice are supported, if you've not done so already.
I completely jumped ship from Windows the better part of a year ago now and haven't encountered a single game that didn't run, at the least, reasonably well. And usually just fine OOB. Though ymmv of course.
It's a big YMMV experience with Linux, it just boiled down to mental load in comparison to Windows; Remembering all manner of commands and how to do certain things, along with that subset of hostile Linux users on help forums has made it an OS that I will use only in a dire situation. Linux is mostly for those who aren't afraid to tinker with the OS and have time to figure out what the hell is wrong with their PC in case of a strange situation occurring. Ubuntu worked really well for me for years (except the times it didn't, and I Googled my way to a solution each time). I did miss the ease of installing games and just having them work without extra steps (a common issue for most games). I also expanded my console games library so that the game variety is not lacking.
Windows is admittedly easier to maintain, and I never have any encountered any major concerns since the Windows 7 days and once while on Windows 10. As far as compatibility goes, I know most of my Steam and GOG libraries are compatible with Linux, since I've a tendency to buy games which are supported on Linux. I made sure to give myself a decent library as a result in case Microsoft screwed the pooch enough that I needed to go back to a Linux distro.
And even on hardware that does theoretically support Windows 11, budget hardware will make the most basic of tasks take forever and lower midrange hardware will feel slow. On most Linux distros and ChromeOS, budget hardware will feel slow (mostly due to bloated websites), and lower midrange hardware will feel quite snappy for the most part.
The only reason I still even use Windows is because of destiny 2. That's pretty much the only game I play. If there was a good stable way of doing this on Linux I wouldn't even use Windows at all.
In fact the only computer in my house that even has windows on it is my gaming rig.
Same here but with several games that don't run on Linux. For some degree, I even understand the problem, however painful it is: ANY multilayer's anticheat is a pain in the ass if you have to develop them for two OSs at the same time. Counter Strike: Source was virtually unbannable on Linux for way too long, and I'm still not sure where CS2 is standing now (I stopped back in the CSGO times).
I really don't know how we could fix this, and no, cutting off THAT many games I like is not an option (some of them even barely have a (good) alternative - think of Rocket League).
Same. Was running 10 for years, tried 11, hated it, went back to 10 until that got so bad I just installed Linux…
win11 is hot trash. seems like every other windows release is a skip. did Ballmer enshrine that or was it Gates?
Hmm well . . .
Windows 95 - revolutionary UI changes for its time
Windows 98 - hot garbage update
Windows 98SE - fixed hot garbage and was ok
Windows ME - hot garbage
Windows XP - Windows 95 for grown ups
Windows 7 - This is where it breaks down, since from what I hear 7 was actually pretty good (been a linux user since the ME days) - but if you're counting Windows XP was Windows 5 so maybe they worked on 6 and just didn't release it to break the curse
Windows 8 - Everybody should have just moved to linux at this point
Windows 10 - Who knows. You should have been using linux
Windows 11 - If you're not using linux now you shouldn't have a computer
You forgot Vista between XP and 7, and it wasn't great, so the pattern holds up remarkably well.
8 felt like a mobile OS, because it was.
10 is OK. Not as good as 7, broke support for a bunch of things, really amped up the spyware feeling, but it works OK.
Then 11.
Probably still can have a computer though, it's just not fully yours on 11.
As others pointed out, you're missing Vista from your list. You're also missing Windows 2000 for Workstations (between 98SE and ME) and 8.1 (between 8 and 10) both of which were pretty good releases.
widdows 2000 was the pinnacle for me, beat XP until i wanted to go to 64 bit.
Apart from having 64-bit, XP was a step back; even if I don't count the fucking dog thing.
XP was a fair bit harder to de-bloat than win 2000 and they were hell-bent on forcing internet exploder on the world.XP was also at a time when Linux was becoming pretty easily usable and mac osx was impressive too - I remember using those imac coloured egg things at university in 2000. They were good apart from the mouse, and ran MS office pretty well.
StarOffice was already better than MS-Word at dealing with .doc format across versions.
and ancient version of Wordperfect were miles better for WP anyway ("reveal codes").windows XP was already down to gaming, adobe and CAD/other specialist apps, plus maybe MS Excel that just weren't as good or not available on linux.
You forgot Vista between XP and 7 (probably because your brain blocked that traumatic experience).
DAE WINDOWS LITERALLY HITLER?!?!?
I would much rather pay for windows than become the product with ads, AI, and analytics.
Luckily this is coming at a time where I can run nearly everything on Linux that I previously needed Windows for (with the exception of a handful of games in my steam library)
I don't know what to make of these sort of stats anymore. Just this morning I read something saying more people adopted Win 11 in the past month than use Linux.
Honestly I see a lot of these stats as circle jerking and just used as fodder to push a narrative.
In my tech circle, most of us own all of them. Like 10% only Linux, 10% only windows, 10% only Mac, then 70% Mac/windows/Linux. So 🤷♀️
I’m really loving this journey for them 🥰
Regardless of OS, I'd like to see actual user numbers with stats like this because a percentage oversimplifies the landscape.
Have people moved away from (uninstalled) Windows 11 or have people just bought computers with a different OS/older version of Windows on it. To me, these tell a different tale.
I'd be happy to upgrade my laptop to Win11 but Win11 doesn't like it. I'm not buying a new laptop just because of Win11's dick moves. Win10 works perfectly well on it.
October 2025 has entered the chat
LTSC has entered the chat
Windows XP has been in the chat this whole time
Has entered the Enterprise-only chat. :)
FIS👏CAL👏CLIFF👏
TBH part of the problem is that Microsoft's revenue is only 12% from Windows, and I imagine its profit is lower because it involves a lot of maintaining like antivirus and hardware compatibility than some of their other products.
Basically, they can afford to fuck around with Windows OS and still expect to beat quarterly projections (which they did, again.)
They pivoted from serving the user to serving themselves. I still don't know what big improvements have been made to 11 other than another coat of paint, some LLM features searching for a problem and the odd feature like that Android subsystem that's being cancelled. Modern Standby is still being pushed which would rule out most new Windows laptops for me.
It's not like I want something revolutionary, just a number of quality of life things would be nice without feeling like I'm fighting the machine. If I could search images on my machine with OCR like iOS Photos I would be over the moon but noone's seemed to want to copy that.
I think a primary use for windoze machines is gaming. I hear that the steam deck has pushed a lot of games into playable states on Linux.
So I hope this makes it much easier to switch from windoze to Linux.
I moved to Linux Mint about 4 weeks ago (with optional dual boot Windows). All the games I tried have worked so far, even when not officially supported (turn on Proton compatibility in steam settings). If your multiplayer games use anticheat, Linux is a no go.
If you happen to have 2 harddrives, try installing Linux on one to see if it's something for you.
I’m in this camp. I use my PC mainly for gaming, and it runs Linux. All the games I care about are supported just fine with Steam and Proton. Not every game is compatible, but it works for the ones I want to play.
I found it very easy to get my games working, but experiences will vary. Most games were zero effort because it was handled automatically.
People are saying in another part of this thread that many games with anticheat actually work on Linux.
It saddens me as Windows 8 was absolutely awful and the first step towards the mess we have now. Windows 10 was better but still inconsistent in loads of areas and still felt faffy to use.
If you ignore the ads and bloat ware in Windows 11 it's not that much better than 10, the UI feels more consistent but still more painful to use than Windows 7.
We have no "good" versions of Windows to use, they are all bad and getting worse, I would love to jump to Linux but that has its own raft of inconsistencies and issues, just different ones.
As someone who uses both daily I prefer the shell of Windows 11.
I prefer Windows 11 for its superior HDR support. No other OS even comes close to making HDR as easy as 11 does.
Don't know why you got down voted for that. HDR might be the only reason I use 11.
I run Windows 11 on my workstation rig out of necessity and it's serviceable as an OS... as long as Microsoft keeps their greedy fingers out of it - which they do not. W11's lack of uptake is entirely their fault and they have done nothing to grow any good will amongst their customers and, in fact, constantly treat them like money pinatas to beat repeatedly.
The solution will be for have developers to fully support Linux. I'd date to say they the majority of people still using windows are doing so because they're gamers. While Linux has done what it can to support gaming, it's now up to the game Devs to build games that run on Linux
Alright i hope you can figure out that solution because of the shit show that is the linux development community.
Except that if Windows 11 market-share is bad, Linux on the desktop is even worse.
I kinda feel like Microsoft already knows about the recognized pattern of every other OS release being considered a success. That being said, I’d bet $1 they’re already spending more in the development of Windows 12 v 11.
Love how this is posted when I literally just got done trashing my os(win11) earlier this week and decided to move back to windows 10. Now I run windows 10 stripped of garbage using ntlite. It's been so much better.
Recently built a new PC and clean installed Nobara Linux. It's so much... Better. In every way, except for compatibility—and even that's not close to as bad as people say it is. Granted, I had used mostly open source programs before (still quite disappointed that Playnite isn't available on Linux, I do miss that) but I'm using mostly the same software. The pre-done compatibility fixes etc. that the Nobara team has done (huge props to them!) has made it far easier than i even expected. It really is getting to the point that I want a major laptop/PC manufacturer to ship with a polished, user friendly Linux distro, and get the ball rolling.
It really is getting to the point that I want a major laptop/PC manufacturer to ship with a polished, user friendly Linux distro, and get the ball rolling.
Chromebooks are sort of like that. They are very user friendly and allow you to access Linux shells. The only problem is that you can't get root access without developer mode.
I forgot about Chromebooks—granted, I don't really think of those as what I mean. I don't generally think that "user friendly = restricted and less control", though I'm sure others would disagree. I don't think of Chromebooks as real mainstream Linux.
Oh, and the steam deck has done this I believe, though I don't own one so I don't know how restricted that is either.
If anybody is planning to dig their own mass grave then I recommend Windows 10 LTSC Enterprise. Notice it comes in two flavors: vanilla or IoT, I don't think IoT should be used unless you actually need it because it can be less secure.
That aside, Linux is cool. Maybe try out some of the new distros before committing to yar-har-dery.
IoT is supported until January 2032, while standard LTSC is only supported until January 2027, which only, like, an extra year or so of support over regular Windows 10. I've never heard anything about IoT being less secure but I'm far from being an expert lol.
That's fair, but in general I don't think windows is much of a long term option. The main reason IoT has more vulnerabilities is that it has more endpoints, so if you properly secure everything with credential you should in theory have no problems, but it's statistically much much more vulnerable.
I recently jumped ship to a new gig that MS’s account reps have burrowed deeply into.
It’s been about 7 years since I’ve been in a “Microsoft for all the things” shop. Now that I’m back in Microsoft land after 7 years, my first thought is “what the fuck happened in Redmond?”
The software is buggy, people are restarting left and right, and everything is missing 25% of their competitor’s features. I feel like I’m visiting a childhood home that is now occupied by hoarders.
Thankfully I only have to use Windows to play video games. It would be terrible having to use it everyday for work.
I am dreading the upcoming Windows 11 upgrades at my work. They made everything so fucking hard for me to get into to troubleshoot issues for our users.
Bring back windows XP!
Such colourful days :)
I was team classic theme for a long time. I forget the tool I used but the ability to customize the look of XP was awesome as I had a nice toolbar and start menu theme.
Since XP, I always upgraded to the next version whenever it came out. The insane hardware requirements of Windows 11 make it the only exception.
I use W11, I have no problems with it, sure the settings menus are shit but I just open the control panel directly and its the same since W95. The rest I don't care that much, for work I use Kali anyway.
WSL and installing python from the store (with all the PATH issues automagically solved) is pretty great.
I have Windows 11 for work and I find the new package manager
wingetas a Godsend. I am doing all program installations and upgrading over it and it works pretty well. Also the terminal is a very nice addition.The only thing I value in Windows 10 or 11 over 7 is better multi monitor support, and even that is not a giant issue. It's faster, uses less resources, is better organized, and looks nicer, especially nicer than 10 that looks like a lazy highschool kid spent all of a day on it.
The things I value 10 and 11 over 7 is the immensely better driver support, more consistent updates, quicker access to important software (right click start), UI that doesn't look like it belongs in 2010, build-in amazing antivirus that is better than the majority of free and paid antiviruses, compatibility with new software, customizable start menu, actually usable troubleshooters, ...
Agreed but much of this applies to 10 only.
Good that my windows 7 system still runs when I need it once a year ^^
Ah yes, the good ol tax season.
