switched to Linux and don't regret it. fuck copilot, laggy ass UI, terabyte of ram usage, forced updates and any other bullshit they can come up with.

As much as I want to joke that it is the year of the Linux desktop, I think it is mostly because the younger you are the less likely you are to have a pc (so Windows, Mac, Linux and BSD for the dozens of you).

As far as I can see most of the time people use their phone for everything and only touch a pc for work or if they have a hobby that requires the use of a pc (gaming, digital art, music, programming, etc...).

Win 11 got so bad over the last years that Linux is the better option now.

Everyone talking about how it's because of Windows 11 or their greed driving people away, etc. But they're ignoring the big one:

People don't need as many computers these days. You don't have a lot of households with a laptop for every member of the family because smartphones and tablets have replaced the PC for many people for media consumption and basic tasks.

We're in the process of moving to Linux in our company, entirely because of how aggressively awful Windows 11 is. We'd have been perfectly happy staying on Windows 10 forever, but last week our head of development woke up to discover that Windows 10 had spontaneously chosen to "upgrade" itself during the night without him agreeing to it.

The search function has never been the same since vista. I'm not doing a web search from the search bar. I am specifically searching for files on my computer. F-off. And now I'm constantly asked to save to some cloud I don't give a shit about.

If this calculation proves true, one would think losing close to 1/3 of its customers would cause M$ to rethink some of its business policies/plans...

Such as forcing folks to retire perfectly good hardware and buy new if they wish to run Windoze11.

But then again, it's M$... 🤷‍♂️ 🤦‍♂️

now they try to backtrack by giving another year of w10 updates if the user:

1. logs in with the microsoft account
2. enables backup to onedrive (presumably filling it so they can nag all the time "hey buy our cloud subscription")
3. uses bing as default

Hey, I have an idea that will help Microsoft:

why not add even more AI that logs everything and then reports it to the government through additional telemetry?

then they could even require the next edition to include a dedicated advertising GPU to take those logs and create tailored ads on the wallpaper as well as occasionally parse the logs and generate summaries for safety purposes!

that will bring the customers back and boost short-term profits too!

Forcing people to buy a new computer for nothing more than a security chip on the motherboard will do that

What a well earned drop. They keep forcing their bullshit on us, of course we're interested in other OS's as a result.

I do use windows for most things, but my servers will never run anything but Linux at this point.

good. fuck. microsoft.

they had the choice of not being fucking awful and they had no reason to. im glad its crumbling for them even if wayyy too late.

Just want to say, Google Docs is NOT free. Just because you don't send them money doesn't mean you aren't paying.

This aligns with statcounter data here: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide/#monthly-200901-202505

Windows market share on desktop has been slowly but steadily declining. From 95+% in 2009, to almost 70% today. In the same time period Linux went up from 0.6% to 4%, which is not bad.

Just pure greed and giving users less and less control of an OS will push people away. It did for me outside of work. I don't have any reason to touch Windows that often.

It sounds like a mixture of Chromebooks, and people simply not owning a traditional computer.

Either way, it seems to be mostly Google that's winning here.

My new laptop came with Windows 11, but that’s gone now. Steamdeck must be helping with these figures too. Good work everyone.

Enshittification will do that, yep

It's Linux for me but I also have to assume tablet culture plays a role too.

Lots of valid points here, but then I wouldn't imagine a community like this actually liking Windows and/or Micro$oft. But here in the UK Mac usage is miniscule especially at work where my client base is, and is declining not increasing. I'd say that more than the OS the AI hype train is way worse for dropping numbers than the OS. Businesses here are using AI and just firing employees left right and centre. Every week a client says they have either fired a whole department and replaced them with using AI or outsourced the department to somewhere that uses AI to get the job done. If it continues at this rate the UK will have a massive unemployment issue in a few years where nobody, and I mean nobody works with computers like they used to.

They don’t care they have Azure now.

I haven’t had windows for 5 or 6 years when I switched to Mac. But earlier this year I bought a cheap Windows 11 machine because Windows was required for a contract I thought I was going to get (but didn’t). I was going to return it but thought meh it might be nice to have a personal laptop I can play around with. But I was unimpressed with Windows 11 so much that it mostly gathers dust now.

I’m thinking this is the perfect opportunity to take the plunge into Linux. Has anyone on here used Linux and have any advice?

Mobile and I imagine Google Docs really did a number on Windows necessity. In my experience, large companies and government rely on Windows and O365, smaller organizations use Google Docs. Even universities I've seen start with classrooms a decade ago using Google Docs and hangouts to eventually using Google Suite or whatever its called these days for student/faculty email

At least word documents saved as PDF and shared is way more common today than a decade ago. A decade ago I mainly remember seeing nothing but Excel and SPSS in classes, now I see professors showing how to do stuff in Google Sheets. For a long time computer science and math professors have been geeky and idealistic so you'd regularly see Libre/OpenOffice used in lectures

Another is Blender. In like 2008 ~2.49 Blender, professionals would scoff. A decade later Blender 2.8 releases and by today I hear way less vitriol and more opensess as another tool in the toolbox or recognition as great for at least learning or professional use for smaller teams. Flow was a successful movie made with it

Davinci Resolve is getting better and a lot more mainstream today than a decade ago. And stuff like Kdenlive is more powerful than the vast majority of people need. People were doing great stuff a decade+ ago with iMovie and basic Windows Movie Maker

Video games are a lot easier now because of Valve with Linux

Mobile, adults used to have laptop that pretty much excited to login to their credit cards and pay them, use TurboxTax, print out MapQuest directions, etc. Phones have made a laptop redundant I think for most people now. Work provides one if needed. TV for movies and phone for everything else

To me there's nothing Microsoft can do to stem the decline of Windows. Mobile first is standard now. Microsoft has no presence in smart TVs because they failed with Windows Mobile and Xbox hardware is on life support and they never made the stripped down Xbox Windows available for TV makers anyways. The loss towards mobile will continue.

Then there's national security concerns for countries around the world to be reliant on American software and hardware. Diversification of operating system has picked up heavily. It started like 20 years ago but it didn't seem to really pick up until the Huawei sanctions and driving Huawei to their own OS and Chinese government to invest even more into domestic Linux distro a. Then the recent American trade wars renewing interest in European countries in Linux and LibreOffice. My understanding has been that Linux had had strong adoption in India for some time now

Desktop Linux in the US, I say just keep focusing on prosumer/professional users. Software developers and other IT professionals are already Linux heavy. Some commercial software is available like Maya and Davinci Resolve. Krita and Blender are great. Kdenlive is good. Seems like GIMP and Inkscape development may be picking up momentum. Darktable is great. Valve keep focusing on SteamOS and community distros keep supporting more handhelds making every year easier and easier for gaming. Steam Deck 2 is hopefully a way more available in retail than the first deck. First product work out the kinks and prove viability. Second product and possibly AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm, etc are way more interested in low power gaming than before as well as first class Linux support

Outside of the US, I feel like Trump both term one and now term two has really given Linux and open source software a global boost in appeal.

windows dying doesn't help. they are on a shopping spree buying every AAA game that tencent haven't already bought.

I'll be joining soon enough, going to dual boot with Linux. Only keeping windows for games that won't work on Linux.