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.
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.
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), but I’ve also dabbled in a few other noob-friendly distros like Ubuntu (was really into it when everything was still organs 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.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
I had almost exactly this same issue years ago when I tried Mint. I was trying to get something to work (I think install games on Steam? Something like that) and it would just do nothing, no message, etc. When I asked for help, I was told “This is super obvious” and after trying their suggestions and having them all fail, was told “just go back to windows.”
Ok, done?
(It also doesn’t help that there is a huge difference between ‘you can use the terminal’ and ‘you have to use the terminal.’ I’m an 80’s kid, I grew up with DOS, so I understand how to navigate terminals, I just don’t want to constantly.)
I’ve had similar experiences. Never posted questions myself, but I’ll be Googling for help and find forum posts that are as toxic as you describe.
It’s been bad enough that the Linux elitism on Lemmy leaves a bad taste, even if I haven’t seen as much of the toxic parts here. I know I’m not the only person of my friends group that feels this way about Lemmy’s Linux crowd.
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 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.
CS2 linux version has some issues. Sometimes forcing steam to install the windows version and to run it via proton makes things better.
I dont have CS2 because, well, the obvious reasons. But I do have the original Skylines, and its linux version is also a festering pile of rancid dogshit.
Running the windows version via proton made it run smooth, stable (well, as stable as can be expected with a few hundred mods…lol), and without headache.
so yeah, install windows version and use proton. Overall better experience probably.
Honestly, i think thats my advice about gaming on linux in general, to generally avoid the native version. Personally, I’ve only run into two games that the native version wasnt shit, and that was Stardew Valley and Rimworld.
CS2 is Counter Strike 2. Cities: Skylines 2 is C:S2
Thanks for the tip. I’ll definitely try that.
I tried to get nobara to run a few times but sth was always broken. I’m now on Bazzite after testing Linux Mint a few months. Bazzite seems to be the more polished fedora based gaming distro.
I’ll have a look into that. For work I use Mint and really like it, however wanted to have a gaming distro that already delivers everything that I need and since I already used ProtonGE it was a natural choice for me. But i already had some issues with it probably due to NVidia drivers. Seems to be better now with the latest kernel
I think I get slightly better performance on Bazzite than on mint. Mint e.g. still has the 535 Nvidia drivers as recommended (we’re at 550 now). On Bazzite you’ll probably have to enable x11 until the new update with explicit sync drops mid May. (At least I had a ton of flickering on Wayland with my rtx 3060)
How was it broken?
Using Bazzite, myself. I have a weird issue with rebooting, though. Tends to freeze at the boot screen (grub doesn’t show up at all) then the whole boot/login process becomes a slideshow. This doesn’t happen if I manually turn my PC off and turn it on, though. Really odd problem that I haven’t had on other distros.
I like Bazzite as a whole, though.
That sounds awful. Have you tried disabling energy saving options (like automatic screenlock/sleep)?
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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 thought Arch was more tricky, than Debian
It is, it’s trickier and less supported
My friend, have you checked out the arch user repository? What do you mean with less supported btw?
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.
Now I’m a bit curious how a mouse could theoretically be windows only?
IIRC bluetooth mice use basically the USB protocol but through bluetooth instead of a cable.
It says officially so and I couldn’t connect so far, I’ll let you know if I manage to connect it.
What mouse is it?
https://www.rapoo-eu.com/product/mt350/ Ok, Windows, Mac, ChromeOS, iOS and Android, I will probably get to fix it if I have some time.
This one should work via bluetooth, some pages online indicate so, and it would be very rare that a bluetooth mouse does not work on linux.
And it should absolutely work via the little usb dongle that came with the mouse, as for example my logitech wireless mouse even works in my uefi/bios with the usb receiver.
I sadly don’t have the right USB-port for it, but I’ll try fixing it without the dongle. Which pages?
Yeah, on Windows Heroes of the Storm was using 10gb on my gpu and stuttering massively
On Linux (Lutris) it just works
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’m really loving this journey for them 🥰
As someone who uses both daily I prefer the shell of Windows 11.
“Solution” is to break Windows 10
Well, win10 is going End-of-life next year.
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.
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
I switched to Nobara. I still got to dual boot 10 for a few games but I’m in no rush to get the install set up. I tried 11 and its just pure ensitifacation.
I’m actually scared to dual boot. I’ve heard too many stories of Windows updates messing up the bootloader
I haven’t switched or started dual-booting yet because I haven’t had time, but I’ve read the recommendation that the best way to do dual or even multiple boot is to have separate physical OS drives and select which one to boot from with the BIOS boot selector. Smaller SSD drives are pretty cheap these days, especially if you get them used on ebay or whatever. I picked up a Samsung 240 with 0% wearout for like $20 bucks.
Kubuntu is a very solid choice!
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 bitch.
Steam hardware survey is another data point.
Looks like in March Win10 usage increases a little. Overall it’s on a downward trend though.
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
That’s it, they need to roll out ads in BIOS
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?
Considering they allow to install application on the bios command (Armory Crate, that kind of shit), consider it already done.
Call down Satan.
*edit: Calm. but you know what? Call the man in red. He prolly should be taking notes.
don’t give them ideas, lol
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
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
BaaS??! Oh FFS. It’s too real.
Thankfully no results from any actual BaaS companies yet
Key word: yet 😅
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Don’t give them any ideas. They are watching the forums 😂
If they are gonna put advertisements in the bios then ill flash my pc with libreboot
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
The funny part is that windows will change your boot order back without your consent.
Whatever happened to windows 10 being the last windows? Like windows was moving to the os as a service model.
Apple moved from X to 11 and onwards
They never said X was the final version or converted the products into service models.
And the latest macOS has pretty much the same user experience as the original OS X, just with added features and whatnot. They didn’t do a massive overhaul like Windows does every release.
Most people don’t seem very happy with this “overhaul.” And frankly having poked around it, I’m not sure what they really improved.
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.
That sounds lame, what are the benefits of this?
For who?
For the user, generally smaller changes and staying up-to-date. It’s why I use a rolling-release Linux distro (openSUSE Tumbleweed) instead of a release-based distro, I don’t like big changes and I like staying up-to-date. I think Windows 10 users were excited to have something similar, where they get the same UX, but with improvements coming in a steady stream instead of periodic major releases.
For the company, a more steady income stream. That’s part of why big, online games like Apex Legends are so popular for big gaming companies, getting a steady income stream is preferable to a bunch of money every game release with nothing between launches. In fact, my company is selling off part of the business because it’s too variable (profitability is based on commodity prices) and focusing on the segments of the business that are more consistent. I’ve heard we’d rather have lower average profit margins than highly variable profit margins.
I get it now. It does sound reasonable. I just have an aversion to having to make repeated payments.
Same. But if I’m getting value from it, it may be preferable to making larger payments less frequently.
But if you remove the payment aspect from it (i.e. it’s free either way), there are plenty of reasons to prefer a steady stream of updates to an infrequent dump of updates.
So then the steady stream vs dump comes down to cost, would you rather pay $120/year, or $10/month? Some may even prefer the $10/month to a modest discount (e.g. $100/year) if it means avoiding the larger, one-time payment.
Personally, I prefer one-time payments w/ discount and a steady stream of updates.
I totally agree with your last statement. Honestly, I usually pirate or buy keys so I’m not one of those people paying full price for software, but regular updates are preferable.
It did though, you aren’t paying for 11.
You cheeky bastard
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.
Apparently Microsoft didn’t get the memo :-)
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.
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.
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.
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.Incredible how it took them 30 years to implement that…
They are. Both are also available for Windows 10.
I tried to install winget on Windows 10 but that was not possible if I am not wrong. I think the terminal is available but not winget
winget exists in windows 10, I can’t remember if it is a powertoy or in the ms store or a feature flag thing but it is usable in windows 10.
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
Execs: what can we do?!
Jim from marketing: We could throw ads into windows 11… That’ll get em flocking! People love ads!
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.
More AI in the start menu!
Execs: Holy shit. Give him a raise.
Hang on a sec, this isn’t Google!
Speaking of, let’s see if we can get that Prabhakar Raghavan guy, he seems to know what he’s doing.
With that attitude, you’ll never work in marketing…
REPLACING the start menu with AI is the way to go!!!111
Ads will continue till the users fall in love with 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!
Good god that’s actually insane. Corpos have completely lost it.
It’s more like the execs know that ad revenue is a significant chunk of the revenue stream and cost very little to implement so they’ll keep growing that until it starts measurably impacting other revenue centers in the org
deleted by creator
Where is the research part of “marketing research”? lol
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?
