I'm in way too much of a bubble. I worked at Microsoft for years and continued to run Windows for some time afterwards, sometimes dual booting with Linux. I've tried but always hated MacOS.
But Windows 8 completely broke me -- this was just an unusable OS, plastered with ads and shortcuts that didn't work and a wildly inconsistent UI; big tiles one second, tiny icons the next, some things you had to double-click that used to be a single click, some things you still had to double-click. Some buttons were just plain text, others were buttons, others were just frames with text. It made you sign in with a Microsoft account for reasons never explained. It was just such a heap of garbage that I couldn't do it any more. Trying to help family members who had trouble with their computers became a horrifying slog.
So I completely unplugged from Windows; switched to Chromebooks for casual stuff and recommended them to my family members, and a variety of Linux distributions for more serious stuff.
But I really know almost nobody who uses Windows; this is the bubble I'm in. Lots of people use MacOS, many people use Linux, and the others use ChromeOS. When I see a survey like this saying that 72% of users still use Windows I'm shocked to my core. I guess my next computer I'll stick with Windows for a bit to see if things are more sane now.
I was able to suck it up from 8 till 10, but 11 is starting to piss me off.
I bought a gaming computer a year ago, it was fully pre-built. Somehow a 2 thousand (or whatever) computer comes with Windows Home instead of Pro (wtf Microsoft, you should really make sure OEMs are giving out Pro versions for gaming systems). This is where the fun begins, and I've posted it before on HN. I couldn't install Windows 11 offline in order to avoid making a Microsoft account. I don't like all my personal shit automagically being uploaded to Microsoft's cloud, especially when they default to on, and companies will reset settings on a whim.
So what happened next is I had to literally login, and then when I was finally on Windows, I wanted to add a new account because I don't like that Windows doesn't let me set the *username* local to the OS, if you're going to make me login, please let me set the username, I don't want my Windows path to be C:/Users/gianc/Documents or whatever. I rather set that myself, re-configuring all of that after the fact feels like it will break something, and it is not worth it.
So I go to create a new Windows offline account only to be told by the modern Windows 11 UI that I'm on Home edition of Windows, and cannot add users from that software, go to software XYZ from Windows. So I go there... guess what error I got? The same exact error telling me to go back to the previous program. I wound up installing Linux in frustration.
The only reason I don't use Linux is if the drivers stop being supported OOTB by the installer, which has happened to me before. Linux might have its own issues, but at least it's not completely FUBARd despite one of the largest companies pouring millions into its development.
My 80 years old grandmother uses Ubuntu to browse web content and play casual games.
When my aunt bought her a new computer with Windows she couldn't use it properly and complained that she wanted a computer "like the old one". She was equally unable to use Macos in my laptop. Nowadays when people complain about Linux's usability I know that they are normally overstating or talking from prejudice because from a practical point of view no way the usability of any modern distro is significantly behind Windows' or Macos' usability, it's even the opposite I would say.
There is a huge blindspot, I've noticed, where people mistake familiarity for ease of use (and other qualities too). Of course familiar things are easy and comfortable, but this thought doesn't seem to occur to most.
Software usability discussions are particularly prone to this bias.
EDIT: another fun one is internet discussions about metric vs imperial systems, with one side or the other swearing that one is inherently more "intuitive" for a particular use. Due to some extraordinary coincidence it's always the one the writer grew up with...
IMHO usability on Linux is good for advanced users who can more or less understand how packages work and can use the command line to some extent and also for people on the other side who are fine with a 'static' system, use a very limited number of apps, have fixed workflows and don't need to change/install anything themselves.
In between there is a giant pit with hard/impossible to solve cryptic errors (or no errors and just silent crashed on launch unless you try to open the same app in the terminal). Confusing and half-baked documentation (because there are dozens different way to accomplish the same thing depending on your distro and config, good luck figuring out which is the right one for you) etc. etc.
A lot of these issues are not really "bugs" and just a natural outcome of the decentralized nature of Linux (non-kernel part) development. They can be solved by power users but not by people who are used to much more user friendly workflows on macOS (again IHMO) somewhat less (but still more so than on Linux) on Windows.
I install everywhere Fedora for the same reasons. As long an the users aren’t Windows-Users and believe they know computers they will be happy with a plain Linux. They update itself, they upgrade it self and they’re happy not forced into updates.
GNOME can be criticized for missing options but it features a simple and neat interface and keyboard centric usage makes it a bless.
I myself using Arch which for more than 14 years now and it is a perfect fit for professions and enthusiasts. But in case of an average user, Fedora.
What I mean with Windows-Users? People which believe they need to install “drivers“ themselves. Which argue against Linux anyway because it doesn’t support the weird „Desktop Metapher“ from Windows 95. And usually argue that weird hardware like 3D-Shutterglasses or some kind of HDR-Something (just insert here some hot new stuff) isn’t supported. The broad majority of users don’t want that and don’t need it. What matters is HiDPI-Scaling (good, with exception of the awful thing named Electron) and easy to configure sound-system (Pipewire nailed it). And unification of which we achieved through Linux, LIBC/LIBSTDC++, Coretuils and finally Systemd and Flatpak. The point here is the chain of parts building upon each other.
Recommendations
Stay away from Nvidia. Use old ThinkPads if you have not special requirements. Use printers with AirPrint (IPP-Everywhere).
Teaching
I would be happy if people start teaching the users to read the interface (like a book or an info grahic), think and then act. Input, Process, Output. TUIs foster that and I think that is why users accustomed to them love them - and dislike most GUIs and nearly all websites.
What computer courses do for decades? Not teaching users using the interface. They just drill them to click on a specific icon (once, or twice or with the wrong mouse button).
Just see them happy when the type “Email” and Linux offers Evolution or Thunderbird. And if they don’t find it two months later? Again “Email”.
I setup several folks over the years with Linux on their laptops. Usually after they ended up with malware or other oddities on their Windows computers multiple times. I would always ask them what they do on their computers, usually it was 99% web. I would never hear from these people until they wanted to buy a new computer. Prior to that I felt like I was looking at some issue every 6 months or so. All the Linux desktops are pretty nice now, and actually have been for a quite a while if all the person is doing is web stuff. Firefox or Chrome looks the same to the average person no matter what operating system they are using.
The other thing worth mentioning is well, the computers will almost always perform better with a Linux distribution over a bloated Windows install.
I've used Linux primarily since the 90s. I even had a Slackware install back in the day.
When Ubuntu started getting popular I had this same opinion. A lot of my friends would tell me that they gave Linux a try but gave up because of "random things not working" whereas, allegedly, using Windows everything "just works." This didn't sit well with me because I had the opposite experience with Windows.
Until the last couple of years, unfortunately. It's almost always kernel updates, but I had the sound suddenly stop working on a Kubuntu install after a kernel update, and I've had a few cases where the new kernel wouldn't even boot and I had to drop back to the old one.
These types of things are hard to quantify. Maybe there's more random nonsense across all users with Windows than there are with Linux. But kernel updates have started to make me nervous again and that's a step in the wrong direction.
Well, it's a mix. There are a ton of captive Windows users, corporate employees, gamers, people working with Microsoft technologies, etc.
But there are also experienced Windows users and frankly a lot of the garbage added isn't that big of a deal. Yeah, it requires a bunch of configuration work, but after a few hours you can get Windows to more or less work how it's always worked.
> But there are also experienced Windows users and frankly a lot of the garbage added isn't that big of a deal. Yeah, it requires a bunch of configuration work, but after a few hours you can get Windows to more or less work how it's always worked.
Yeah, people like to complain about the amount of time they spend getting Windows to work they want, but they’re willing to spend hours trying to get sleep to work in Linux.
There are plenty of scripts out there to disable as much or as little of the telemetry and everything else as you want, using the Pro or Enterprise editions lets you skip the cloud, and then it just… works.
There’s a certain give and take with all OSes about how much you adapt to it and how much it adapts to you. At work I use a Mac, I have two Linux servers in my closet, and my personal machine runs Windows. They’re each the right tool for their respective jobs, for me.
If Windows 8 broke you Windows 11 is going to to make you wish you stayed broken.
They got rid of a lot of nice things in the UI like ability to move the toolbar (what Microsoft calls taskbar) to the right (hiding it completely would be nice but of course you can't have that without unreliable 3rd party scripts), shoved MS account through users' throat, introduced "lock screen" mess which you can't disable while breaking on battery behavior. In my case it made my laptop completely unusable on battery as I either need to type my password 30 times an hour and/or deal with screen going dark because of "inactivity". No matter how many settings I disabled the behavior is still there. It's widely reported on the Internet but pleas to Microsoft to just let us use our computer in peace by disabling lock screen and screen dimming are unanswered.
So now Windows forces you to use Microsoft account, shoves ads and crapware into your face (even in "pro" version), makes significant part of your vertical screen real estate unusable because of popping up toolbar like in good old days of internet browsers, makes using laptops on battery a mess. They removed a lot more options to tweak the UI. It's just full on assault on usability. It really does seem like they want to get rid of power users so they can continue shoving more ads and dark patterns on remaining ones. Like those Nigerian Prince scammers who make glaring grammar errors in their emails so people with any kind of critical thinking skills won't bother them responding.
If you wonder why I upgraded - I really didn't want to but at some point they must've sneaked a dialog somewhere where I had a habit of clicking through and to my surprise it was Windows 11 from now on. I resisted for a long time but they have won.
Not trying to negate your experience as all that's pretty awful, but I purchased my Windows 11 legally of course, and then immediately used modified/pirated install media to install it:
- Without a Microsoft account
- With telemetry disabled (as much as is possible anyway)
I haven't seen any ads in the OS... maybe a OneDrive one? I have no idea what you're talking about with a toolbar though, the only thing of size that pops up on mine is the start menu. Unless that's the new search thing I disabled.
I dunno. On balance, I LOVED Windows 7, Windows 8 was a mess, Windows 10 was... more or less just 7 with an uglier and more confusing interface, and if anything, 11 is a step back towards 7 in my mind, both in aesthetics and usability. Though I was also never one for the side taskbar, so if that's your bag, I can absolutely see you not enjoying it being gone. Other positives:
- They're finally reunifying settings into a single interface, hopefully they finish this time before starting a new one
- New display configuration options are much more sanely organized
- I've had just, WAY fewer issues with drivers in general
Some negs:
- Audio settings are now in five places, any of which can and can not apply to whatever you're doing, seemingly on the fly
- They replaced the context menu with a different context menu that's only slightly different and instead of just carrying over old options with some sensible defaults, hid them in a sub-context context menu which just... ugh
MacOS is still bae though. And that's probably why I like 11 okay is because it feels distinctly like Microsoft chasing Apple with regard to OS design. But as someone who would definitely consider myself a power user, I have no issues using 11. It's an improvement on 10, IMO, which was a distinct downgrade from 7 but itself was a massive upgrade from the train-wreck that was 8, so overall the trajectory is acceptable.
I have been primarily a Mac user, but Windows 7 was pretty good.
Windows 8 was awful and I refused to use it. However, Windows 10 was really good relative to Windows 8 primarily because it continued some of the good underlying tech Windows 8 brought with it, but was an acknowledgement by MS that the UI/UX needed to be user focused. It wasn't completely there...for example, the Candy Crush ads were still there in the start menu, but the direction relative to 8 was good. However, Windows 11 (and moreso Edge) shows that MS never really had that realization and continues to see their software not as tools for the users to use to simplify and improve their lives but as "products" to be used exactly as MS wants us to use it.
My disillusionment with macOS also lies with this attitude.
For me, Linux is the only desktop OS to be used by choice anymore.
I would easily believe it. In fact, I don't think I know anyone who doesn't use Windows - all of my friends and family use it (as far as I am aware), and while I use Linux on my personal laptop, I am stuck with Windows on my work laptop. I think Windows is still quite dominant in the corporate space, and amongst people who are not tech literate at all.
I used to dual boot Windows and Linux, but the most recent version of Windows I tried (11 I think?) really pissed me off during the setup process, mainly by persistently badgering me to get a Microsoft account. Between that and Linux getting a lot better at running the (relatively few) games I play, I decided to get rid of Windows and just use that drive as extra storage.
Most of the people I know who run Windows personally (not at/for work) either do it only because gaming's easiest/best there, or because it's easy to get free or extremely-cheap used Windows machines that'll hold up for a year or so (then get another when they break) [EDIT] And actually that last category's a single person I know who's a writer, so wants a laptop with a keyboard but only uses an old word processor on it, and email, nothing else.
Exceptions are my relatives over age 60, who barely do anything with their computers and should probably just have Chromebooks or iPads + keyboard (god, they could really use the accessibility features...), but are used to computer = walk into Costco or Best Buy and buy a desktop tower.
Most non-gamers who also aren't computer nerds, whom I know, "compute" mainly on their phone anyway. Shit, so do I, and I'm both of those—my Windows machine is just for gaming, nothing else whatsoever. 95+% of everything important that needs some kind of computer, happens on my phone. I bought my last house on it, entirely, LOL.
Windows does that to me every few years when I try it. Something in getting set up (forced Microsoft account, aggressively pushing Edge, forced updates that reboot my machine) that makes me bail. Now that I don't work for a company that uses Zoom, there's nothing for which I need Windows at the moment.
Try to go to a bubble outside US or countries with the same kind of life and salaries.
You will find plenty of Windows, and developers for the users of them.
Linux will be around in server rooms, embedded, and those VMs used by everyone that doesn't want to spend time dealing with dual boot issues on laptops as if it was 2000.
All of the gamers use windows. All of the office workers use windows. All of the medical equipment that need a PC, run on windows. In manufacturing all the pcs run windows.
So 72% is probably an underestimation.
The only market share that Microsoft lost in the last decade was in the school market (by Chromebooks) and the POS (by tablets)
If you define "office workers" as people who use Windows then sure. Even if we don't count tech quite a few people still use Macs (of course depends on country area but Apple seems to have very high market share amongst architects (of course not engineers but I think Linux is overrepresented there), designers etc. where I am).
as an office worker... i use linux, a bunch in my team use apple's OS. i'd say it's only about half of my team that still uses windows, trending downwards. but in general i'd probably agree that more than 72% of office workers use windows, just definitely not all of them and i'd expect it to keep trending downwards if m$ doesn't change course.
This is a survey from gamers. There are a lot of games that only work on Windows, or work much better on Windows.
It's only been somewhat recently that games that support Linux have exploded in numbers. Somewhat coinciding with the release of the steam deck and the massive community it brought with it. There are now launchers for other stores for Linux and more every day.
Still, a lot of gamers don't really have a choice but to at least dual boot into Windows if they want to play some of the most popular games (Fortnite, for one).
It's because you can run native Windows games on Linux with very few issues nowadays, not because developers started porting their games to Linux more often.
Not supported games are mostly online multiplayer ones, and are using extremely intrusive anticheat rootkits. Fortnite is a great example of that. Anticheat devs refuse to support Linux for obvious reasons (too many ways to escape the rootkit).
Windows is basically everywhere outside of the US and maybe some select european countries. Windows improved a lot in some ways, the default experience is for sure way better than windows 8, though you still have to disable a good amount of annoying features if you don’t want ads.
WSL is great if you have enough RAM, you can now rely on winget to setup your applications, OneDrive is reliable, the Microsoft Store is finally useful with Win32 applications (even SysInternal is now distributed via the store!). The settings panel finally makes sense, though not everything has been migrated yet. Windows updates are way more reliable. Windows PowerToys provides almost everything power users may need. The updated windows management is just awesome, simple to use and provides a good amount of options. Notepad is now a real text editor, the screenshot tool supports recording too, Edge competes with other modern browsers and has some unique features such as windows splitting.
That’s just a subsets of some things that improved, there is way more. But it is fundamentally still Windows, it’s just way more polished.
Out of curiosity what part of the world do you live in?
I currently work remotely for a company that is head-quartered in California. The company issues MacBooks unless you ask for a Windows laptop. Most of my co-workers in California grew up using Macs and love them. Whereas it seems that, for some reason, the majority of the non-Californian employees grew up using Windows.
My current manager came from Microsoft and was the one that pointed this out to me (because, like you, I also have always hated MacOS ... before our company started issuing Windows laptops to those who request them I tried really hard to get used to it and just couldn't). My manager's claim, though I'm not sure how accurate it is, is that Apple seems to have a cultural hold within California, with lots of businesses using them as well as consumers ... but outside of the state Microsoft has the hold. Again, it's a hypothesis, I don't know if there's any validity to it ... but I'm curious if there could be some truth to it.
I think that hypothesis is correct, and has spread to tech startups in general (primarily web-based tech startups). I have never lived in California but have many other places around the country, and with many different companies, and that is definitely in-line with what I've seen as well.
The other factor (related somewhat but not completely) I think is that Apple has become a status symbol. People who chose Windows were rare, and got lots of shit for picking Windows. The peer pressure made the majority of people either stick with macOS even if they didn't like it, or switch at the refresh cycle (and make sure to announce that was their intention anytime they got shit for having a windows laptop). Usually I was the only one on Linux, and there'd be one other person on Windows who didn't care about the pressue, but 99% of everybody would go with the flow.
Not sure if it is specifically California because it does seems majority of US Tech sector, especially those doing Web Development uses MacOS.
But your comment does echo the some point many have repeatedly posted on HN, in Europe most of their colleagues are on Windows. ( Although some people mention UK having higher Mac concentration ) And Mac is an absolute minority, even within the tech sector.
But I have been saying for some time, at the current rate things are going I would not be surprised if Microsoft start to open source a portion of Windows. And the pendulum may swing to their favour once they have captured more of the Cloud and Enterprise revenue.
IIRC Apple was donating lots of Apple IIs to schools in California in the 80s and then still maintained a disproportionately (compared to other states) high market share in the educational market in the 90s and 2000s. This presumably had a multi-generational effect as people graduating from those schools were more likely to buy Macs and then children growing up in those households were more used to them than Windows PCs etc.
I have to wonder if AI is going to cause more interest in user privacy. It's been an issue with ad business models and AFAICT Microsoft also reserves the right to use your personal info to "improve and develop [their] products."[1]
Doubtful. As a privacy advocate of 15+ years, pretty much nobody cares about privacy. When you describe to them in detail how invasive their Amazon products and twitter/facebook are, they get very uncomfortable and don't like it, but they just continue to buy/use those products so it really doesn't matter. I've had people (not on HN but fairly tech literate) say they use Apple for privacy reasons but then had major misunderstandings about that (i.e. they assumed that an app on the app store must be privacy respecting because Apple reviews them, or that Apple themselves don't collect lots of first-party data, etc). So I doubt AI is going to make a big difference.
I'm not really a dev so I've made an art of going through all the minutiae of changing the terrible default GUI back to windows xp or so which makes it a decent consistent experience (mostly open shell + 7+ Taskbar Tweaker + manually recreate quicklaunch + remove all pinned apps)
Then I spend some time disabling ALL of the updates as they generally do more harm than good
Then I make sure to install directory opus...
Then windows isn't too bad especially when I have no choice but to use it for my work (whereas all of my colleagues have constant problems with borked updates and inconsistent interfaces)
to be fair, I bought a laptop with windows 8 ten years ago and I immediately formatted it and manually installed windows 7 on it though it was a tad tough to find drivers as it was a cheapo consumer laptop)
In Ecuador a new mac is way too expensive for most people. The availability of used ones are low. I imagine this is because people can't afford them new so they don't have any to resell. Computer literacy is such that most people don't know about linux. When I'm down there doing research and have participants using linux no one seems confused by it. I think for most people I meet, it is just a question of having linux already on the computer. Everyone pirates the os so the quetion of paying never comes up. As far as I can tell, this is pretty typical in a number of Latin American countries and probably common in most of the world where macs are luxury items.
Some industry use Windows only (or near 90% similar to creative people using Mac only). For example facilities, controls and uncle Sam. You are in a bubble. Try joining yoga or church. You will know many still use Windows.
you might be right, but don't give too much credit to how representative the survey correspondants are.
i am from the opposite camp: my first personal computer (not the family one) came with Ubuntu because the SKU was too cheap to come with windows (back when it would've instead shipped with FreeDOS or something).
i've seen the pain in using windows 8 in another computer in the family. but then i also faced much more nightmare scenario with linux (as someone not very technically inclined at the time): from wifi/bt chip not working to zero video out in a hybrid-graphics laptop.
but after toiling through forums (and learning a lot about managing computers), i also managed to get my parents on using ubuntu for their daily tasks. i was not too concerned about edge cases as i had to step in for IT support regardless of the os.
i personally switched back to windows after trying for 5+ years because everything i needed to do "just worked". i cannot say it for an average grandma, but this audience could easily work around the recent privacy bs microsoft has put out. compared to the gymnastics i needed to do in linux, i'd say it is much less of a trivial task, but you sometimes need to keep up with it through subsequent windows updates.
i recently bit the bullet and switched to windows 11. i am unable to use wsl2 or any virtualization because it breaks the ability to undervolt a laptop cpu. combined with recent ml libraries refusing to properly support windows and cater more to people using google colab, i might finally be nudged back to trying out linux, but i am on the fence.
I am in a similar situation. Worked at Microsoft, left, stuck with Windows through 10, now am a mix of MacOS and Linux.
I hated MacOS, and still do mainly because of the Window management, but after using it for work and the hardware being so much better for me than anything I could find PC I finally switched. My desktop is still Linux. Most of the people I know switched to Mac which is how I know I am in a bubble.
I don't expect to buy another Chromebook after I found out mine had planned obsolescence. After a certain date it would no longer update. I didn't realize this would happen when I bought it so it came as a surprise. Still a perfectly fine machine otherwise I just have to make time to figure out how to install some Linux distro.
> when I see a survey like this saying that 72% of users still use Windows I'm shocked to my core.
Of course, that's a worldwide figure. The regional breakdown will likely show you prevalence more in line with your expectations. Only 62% in the USA, for example.
What's preventing me from going all in to Linux desktop is software only available in windows and HDR, it seems KDE plasma 6 is going to ship HDR this year, so it might be just enough for me to not care about the rest.
I'm a software engineer who chooses to use Windows.
I grew up a windows user. I downloaded the Windows 7 Beta when I was 12 years old (and still think it's the best UI any OS has ever had). When I was in college I used Linux more, but found that the only reason I used it was as glorified desktop customization software. All of my assignments were in Java and my personal projects were in C.
I switched to a chromebook halfway through college and did all my assignments by SSHing into a rented VPS running Ubuntu. After college I finally got some money and bought some used thinkpads, which I ran Windows on.
My first job out of college we had macbook pros, and I hated those frickin things. The UI was so opinionated and slow with all of its animations. There was no way to disable the paneled desktops and there was no built in package manager or tiling window manager. Their bash version (this was pre-zsh) was an ancient build from 2007 and their coreutils lacked all the neat GNU extensions features (I recommend anybody who uses a macbook immediately install coreutils from homebrew and also upgrade bash). I had a million things I hated about macOS and still do.
Other companies let me choose between a mac and a PC, and I went with PC. My current company gave me a Macbook pro and I haven't turned the thing on in a year. I use my desktop PC for everything. I like powershell, Windows Terminal, Winget/Chocolatey, vcpkg, Visual Studio, and MSVC language features like SAL. DirectX11 blows OpenGL out of the water in terms of syntax without getting as complicated as Vulkan. I prefer the Win32 API Convention of initializing things with structs and getting more descriptive return types to Linux's everything-is-an-int. I don't mind the Windows 11 UI as much as I thought I would but still sometimes customize my taskbar to look like Windows 7 (but it's just not the same).
tl;dr: I like windows, and not because I'm a captive user
I grew up on Windows as well, starting with Win 3.0. I switched fully to Linux in 2010, but have still usually had at least one Windows machine in my life. Windows is really pretty damn good, and if they would just stop trying to force things on users (MS accounts, Edge browser, etc) and stop trying to further monetize the system (ads), it would be a really compelling option. I spent a total of 24 months on macs, and like you, when your preferred workflow doesn't match Apple's opinion of the correct way, macOS is like cement blocks around your ankles.
I also rather use Windows, even though I have an extensive UNIX experience since getting introduced to it via Xenix in 1993, and using most well known commercial variants since then.
Mac OS occasionally at work, in project assigned laptops.
Linux plenty of distributions since getting Slackware 2.0 on 1995's Summer.
Eventually I gave up on the Linux Desktop dream, around Windows 7 timeframe.
As a software engineer in the UK I'm very much in the same bubble. It's almost unreal to me how much Windows has managed to enshittify. It's hard to know at what point (if ever) they'll turn the ship around and make an OS that's actually pleasant to use. I'm guessing there are basically no economic incentives to do so.
I've personally moved to an entirely MacBook based workflow where I have a dock on my table and plug in either my work or personal MBP depending on what I'm doing.
I was issued a Lenovo Thinkpad at work, recently, for the first time in more than a decade. "Sure, let's see. I used to own a(n IBM) Thinkpad back in the day—sure I ran Gentoo on it, but it was nice enough hardware. I've used Windows since 3.1, and still game on 10, I know my way around it. I can manage. Having a USB-A port is sure nice."
40-50% battery loss overnight while "sleeping". And other irritations galore. I'd forgotten what battery anxiety was like. Good lord.
Got on the MacBook list with IT ASAP. That MacBook lost 40% charge sitting in my backpack—over a week-and-a-half Christmas break. Ahhh, back home. So much more relaxing.
I desire leaving Windows behind but the job opportunities in my line of work are pretty much reliant on the Microsoft Universe. The changes (no one dare to call those things improvements in front of me, do not dare!) are done to the system makes the usage more and more difficult and unpredictable, destroying essential and reliable features for the sake of never missed decorated obstructions. I hate it and feel disgust every morning when I have to turn it on, disgusted of all the many of the workarounds that I have to carry out daily to get the work done, reluctant and afraid of any and every updates, 'damn, here we go again, what will break now?!' or 'how can I serve its Royal Majestry the Windows System more to keep it operational and its brand new needs satisfied, how much should I adopt to their royal quirks?!'.
Difficult to change line of work after so many years but I am pushed in this direction pretty strongly.
(The OSX mentality was a friendly one to me when we first met and luckily its changes are slower in diminishing usability - they try though, they try persistently! - so my private computer is not a Windows one for about 20 years already. Probably it was Linux now otherwise, quite possibly.)
I tried windows a while ago and the things you described were driving me insane. I honestly don't understand how that gets shipped. Doesn't anyone care? I'm assuming most devs and PMs are on Mac anyways so they don't even see the mess
Coincidentally I saw the latest Steam hardware survey results[0] just about an hour ago which says that Windows is dropping and macOS and Linux are both gaining:
It's very interesting to me that Arch Linux is reportedly the most popular distro among Steam users. I wonder if that's actually accurate, or if people who use other distros are more likely to decline the survey for privacy reasons, and people who use Arch like sharing because of the "I use Arch BTW" meme
I'm not too surprised about gamers aligning with a somewhat minimal rolling distro that is quick to update packages, especially considering how comparatively slow the other big distros are.
Arch is in general a quite popular and quite decent distro, and the complexity of using it has decreased quite a lot in my opinion. I still wouldn't recommend it if there's a risk I end up having to handhold the person afterwards though.
It's not really. The most popular distro is actually SteamOS Holo with 40% of the pie. For whatever reason Steam doesn't report SteamOS in the overall Linux stats until you drill down. It's also hard to tell if Arch is really the top non-SteamOS Linux distro because 5% of users are using the Steam Flatpak which could be on virtually on any distro.
it was a couple years ago, but when i tried to game on Debian i was shocked by some 4+ year old packages that i wanted to try gaming with, nothing worked.
it's probably better today, but i definitely recommend a very up to date distro for gaming, and arch is literally the most up to date there is. happy with arch myself, except the nvidia issues, if you run an nvidia gpu i don't recommend it just yet (getting better really quickly though)
Arch is weird. I consider myself a Linux power user, including kernel hacking but no way I'm going to manually set up partitions and type gazillions of commands to set my system up.
This is off putting, I have no idea what's wrong with an installer. WTF Arch?
If you're going to be a Linux gamer, you have to be a fan of the game of Linux. Most games are going to need some tweaking or a weird package in order to work. Arch makes a lot of sense for that crowd.
* That's a change from 96.56% on Windows to 96.40%. That's a small enough shift to be attributable to noise.
* In the December 2022 survey [0] (one year earlier), Windows had 96.15% share. So to the extent these tiny shifts mean anything at all, the trend for Windows market share was actually up slightly year-on-year.
> Interesting that only 0,06% are using Win 7 which I would name MS' last good OS.
No DirectX 12 support for Win 7. And even games that don't require DirectX 12 now usually support Windows 10 and up. Sometimes because they don't want to test on older OS, but Windows 10 has legitimate API improvements that are worth taking advantage of.
On top of that of course the general security reasons not to use an unmaintained OS release.
Getting games to run on Linux often requires tinkering and the people who like to partake in this stuff and have the skill for likely run one of those “hardcore” distros like Arch.
Those who don’t want to tinker and stick to already supported games would probably just run SteamOS to begin with (or a proprietary OS).
This hasn't been true for a while now. Many games have Linux builds, and for those that don't, Steam Proton works incredibly smoothly, and is integrated with the most popular game launcher, Steam. For the most part all you have to do to play games on linux now is click the checkbox to opt into Proton, and then click play.
The biggest remaining issue is anticheats for some competitive games
Surprised that macOS is gaining more than Linux. For some reason, I imagine there are more Steam Deck sales (Linux) than there are macOS users deciding to download Steam but maybe it's a numbers game.
I think it's more about the games people want to play. I certainly wouldn't buy a mac to game on. But if you already have one and it runs the games you want to play (factorio, for example), then why not just use it?
Baulders Gate 3 has quite great Apple Silicon & MacOS support. I know of a few normally-non-gamers who loaded that up on their Mac over the past couple months.
Games tend to ride the new release schedule more than most other forms of media (except maybe new movie releases in theaters), and there have been a few notable releases in the past few weeks. Apple had a big push with Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil 4 Remake in the past few months; if you already own those games on Steam, you got the Mac versions of those games at no additional charge. Also, Baldur's Gate 3 (which is widely regarded as one of the best games of 2023) got a native Mac release in Q4.
As for it being a numbers game, neither Apple nor Valve release direct hardware sales numbers, so only they will know.
The ARM Macs are actually quite decent for less demanding games, even when running under Intel emulation. FWIW I started to play a couple of strategy games on my Mac over the holidays because I was away from my gaming PC and only had my Mac available.
I realise for casual users Windows is always going to be the OS of choice if for no other reason than it comes pre-installed and most people don't know how to reinstall an operating system.
However, Windows may be in trouble with more tech-literate people who do know how to change it. I can only speak for myself, but I've been a Windows user since 95. All but one of my programming jobs over the last 20 years have also been working on Windows. But I really dislike the direction Microsoft are taking and I find Windows to be terribly slow these days, with each version seemingly worse than the previous one. So I decided to look elsewhere.
A couple of months ago I bought a new laptop with the express intention of running Linux on it and giving it a good college try (I didn't want to mess around with dual-booting and I still need Windows on my main PC for work... for now). I know very little about Linux, but I've decided I'm not going to use Windows past 10 so it's time to find something else.
I went with Debian running dwm (Debian because I value stability over everything else, and dwm because I like the suckless philosophy) and it's honestly surprised me how good it's been. It's SO snappy. Everything is instant. It's really been a breath of fresh air.
I was especially dreading programming since I've solely used Visual Studio since Visual C++ 4.0 and don't really know anything else. Anyway, I went all-in and started learning Vim, GDB, and Make, and boy do I feel like I've been missing out. I'm really enjoying programming again, which for me has just become a job over the years.
Anyway, my point is, if tech-literate people are willing to give Linux a try, I wonder how many of them would be as surprised as I was and may make the switch permanently. With Windows getting worse, and Linux getting better, maybe more than ever.
People occassionally ask me what my best advice is for becoming a great programmer, and they are surprised when I say vim, bash (including for and while loops), and core tools like sed, grep, awk/cut.
When you know enough bash to (without having to look it up every time) write a command that filters (sed) and parses (awk, cut) and then loops (while, for) you will be amazed at what you can do and how quickly you can do it. Then add Vim and you can fly through tasks near the speed of thought.
I wonder how much scraping bots skewer the counters. They create a lot of traffic and majority of them run on "Linux Desktop", even though some modify the user agent.
Would be curious to see stats for e.g. subset of GPU-accelerated devices which can be detected in JS. Not as a true bot-filter of course, but as a uniform and widely-available metric biased towards real users.
Both, it's both, and they're meeting in the middle. Windows has taken a nosedive with 11, while I can say at least for KDE that it has been improving massively in stability over the past few years, and Proton has made gaming on Linux possible. Adobe being Windows-only is still a big hold for lots of people, but unlike decades ago, today lots of top software like Davinci Resolve is now nativelly compatible. Pinta is no Paint.NET and Okular can't match Adobe Reader, but eventually they just might be good enough.
One day we'll look back at the legacy pile of self contradicting nonsense that Windows is and wonder how we ever used it productively.
For one, how do we define Linux desktop? ChromeOS is a distribution of Linux, unlike say Android even advertising official support for a Debian container to run Linux desktop software, and while it lacks GNU utils, Alpine does too and yet we still include it in this category...
Next is the whole way we're counting the supposed number of Linux computers: user agents. There's zero reason for browsers to provide true and specific user agents, in fact, true user agents often yield broken sites (like YouTube assuming ARM PCs are all a specific Chinese smart TV) or pose a great privacy risk. Certainly a significant percentage of Linux users made the choice against it, either by themselves or as a browser default.
Then there's the fact specific demographics have their own distribution of platforms. For example, StackOverflow developer survey showed 40.23% of developers prefer Linux for personal use, compared to 31.07% who prefer MacOS. The absolute numbers matter little if your users in particular tend to be on a certain platform.
> But I think tech people recognize this as referring to "OS's that aren't Windows or Mac".
Do they? The metric includes "Unknown" and "Other" not referred to in this, representing another 5% of activity.
However, what the OP seems to be saying is that interpreting anything from the metric and trying to communicate that interpretation with others is pointless. Not even the linked article can decide whether Linux desktop penetration is 4% or 6%, and that's just one person. Good luck when you add a second person with their own feelings.
Long time windows user here, developer of cross platform applications for 30+ years.
Started getting very frustrated with the way windows treats its users. It’s simply a non starter for any serious user these days; what with the ridiculous resetting of all bing settings periodically, the non stop abuse of your login mode (live vs local), and man every time that fucking Out Of Box Experience wizard would start and interrupt your login I would nearly shit myself with annoyance.
…
Recently took a position on an all Linux dev project, totally removed windows from my life (and kids). Whole house runs Linux now.
The existence of Linux and the abusive practices of Microsoft are a kind of daily reminder about why competition is so important even for basic, fundamental technologies like operational systems.
If Linux weren't always behind the door threatening Windows, surely we would have today as the only option a hiper restricted OS with a terrible performance, a huge pice tag and horrible terms of use(well... this is already the case).
I'm not sure how much it is Linux vs. just most consumers have expectations of open because that's historically been how it is. I don't doubt that if Apple were starting the macbook as a new product today, it would be locked down just like the iPhone is. MS would copy and go that way too. I don't think Linux is causing either one of them to hesitate, I think it's the fact that consumers already expect those to be general purpose devices, so it's going to be a slow bleed.
Not really. People don't care about libre software, they care about software that works, is supported, and they don't have to think about it. The Linux desktop appeals to developers and hackers, so 4% is probably the best they're ever going to do.
On the flip side, look how much Microsoft is losing to Linux in the server space. Consumers don't care what servers their favorite sites and services are running on: they don't have to manage it.
> The Linux desktop appeals to developers and hackers, so 4% is probably the best they're ever going to do.
Probably not. The body of the article reports 6.24% desktop Linux penetration already.
The 4% reported in the headline refers to browsers which report Linux in the user-agent string. That is more down to browser choice than kernel choice. Specifically, a popular Linux browser has chosen to omit "Linux" from its default user-agent claim, hence the discrepancy.
It may be that developers and hackers are drawn to certain browsers, but that is beyond the subject of Linux.
I would add on to the "don't care" to say that (in my experience) your typical computer user doesn't even understand what an OS is. With many people that I've interacted with they just equate the computer and OS as one thing and have no idea what OS they're using, much less that it's actually replaceable.
> Not really. People don't care about libre software, they care about software that works, is supported, and they don't have to think about it. The Linux desktop appeals to developers and hackers, so 4% is probably the best they're ever going to do.
Also, it shows the power of defaults and just showing up. Windows is as big as it is because Microsoft made the deals with OEMs 30+ years ago to ship their software as the default option. Macs would likely be an also-ran if Apple wasn't standing behind their hardware, both in terms of the hardware itself and the sales/support channel, as much as they are (just look at the relative success of their retail stores vs. the relative failure of Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc., in the same space).
There are also people that prefer to use free / open-source software because of it giving power & control to the users & community, opposed to proprietary software where a single (typically commercial) company controls the software.
The disadvantage of propietary software is that you are at the mercy of how the company decides to maintain and develop their software. And they might do undesirable things towards their users. Like displaying adds, tracking / profiling their user's personal data. Changing the pricing. This typically happens when they gain enough market share and have enough users vedor-locked into their software.
And the vendor lock-in also makes it harder for users to make the software work with other 3rd party software. So generally propietary software isn't easy to combine with third party software, unless the company has a commercial incentive to support it. But often one of the reasons for the software to be propietary is because of the vendor lock-in. So that you will use all software from 1 company that all works well together, but doesn't work (as well) when trying to combine it with third party software.
> so 4% is probably the best they're ever going to do
Why would you say that? Take a look at the trend plot shown at the link. The trend started increasing markedly about two years ago. I wouldn't think it would suddenly flatline. At least I hope it doesn't.
They're playing defense vs ... is "linux desktop" even trying?
I don't expect someone out there to just make it work for everyone else, but outside specialized situations like gaming hardware, or phones, I don't see anyone really putting the work into appealing to the mass of windows users, at least not as far as covering all the bases that you would need to cover to really think about getting people to move.
MacOS is probably the most organized effort and there they are, and they don't cover all the windows features exactly.
That's not a knock on anyone here, just that they're maybe playing defense vs no no real organized effort.
No. I've been using Linux since 2007 and spent most of my career so far in the Linux space. My goal has never been to convert Windows users to Linux. I don't care what others use so long as it doesn't impact me. I just want to make Linux better, because I am also a Linux user, and want my own experience to be better. If my work means someone has a pleasant experience and converts, then great, the more the merrier. But it's not my goal. So I think you're right, we're not trying to get people to move from Windows. We're just trying to make something we want to use.
As someone who has used windows for 20 years, and used linux for a combined total of about 3 years (including now since sept. 2022):
Linux desktop plays defense against itself. As long as linux is heavily CLI dependent to get stuff done, it's going to be stuck in sub 10% penetration. I don't see this changing either because the people who maintain linux love linux the way it is.
Don't get me wrong, linux is extremely powerful, but it's gate kept behind a fetishization of archaic and cryptic command line interfaces.
I think Lennox really opens up for windows users when they understand that everything is a Linux terminal command.
When you go into the GUI and change your display resolution, that is a terminal command. Etc.
This is the same for extremely popular things like VS Code, where all the extensions are super cool, most of them are also terminal commands or have some semblance.
However, I can agree with you that this distinction is never clearly explained. And the majority of windows users have no idea, so they come over to Lennox and don’t understand why things might look strange, or require a terminal.
Windows is a consumer OS, which is terrible for engineering, less centered around CLIs but nevertheless having a few even more cryptic ones tacked on like afterthoughts or a legacy hoarding exercise.
CLIs will always be more powerful than GUIs. They tap into what the OS actually is. The GUI is an illusion.
I'm not shocked. They've successfully "played defence" against a host of others, including OS/2, Be, and DR-DOS. And that's just the operating systems. Don't forget Stac, WordPerfect, Lotus, Novell, Sun, and a host of others.
The shocking bit is that Linux is even still alive, given the graveyard of Microsoft competitors.
Readit News
But Windows 8 completely broke me -- this was just an unusable OS, plastered with ads and shortcuts that didn't work and a wildly inconsistent UI; big tiles one second, tiny icons the next, some things you had to double-click that used to be a single click, some things you still had to double-click. Some buttons were just plain text, others were buttons, others were just frames with text. It made you sign in with a Microsoft account for reasons never explained. It was just such a heap of garbage that I couldn't do it any more. Trying to help family members who had trouble with their computers became a horrifying slog.
So I completely unplugged from Windows; switched to Chromebooks for casual stuff and recommended them to my family members, and a variety of Linux distributions for more serious stuff.
But I really know almost nobody who uses Windows; this is the bubble I'm in. Lots of people use MacOS, many people use Linux, and the others use ChromeOS. When I see a survey like this saying that 72% of users still use Windows I'm shocked to my core. I guess my next computer I'll stick with Windows for a bit to see if things are more sane now.
I bought a gaming computer a year ago, it was fully pre-built. Somehow a 2 thousand (or whatever) computer comes with Windows Home instead of Pro (wtf Microsoft, you should really make sure OEMs are giving out Pro versions for gaming systems). This is where the fun begins, and I've posted it before on HN. I couldn't install Windows 11 offline in order to avoid making a Microsoft account. I don't like all my personal shit automagically being uploaded to Microsoft's cloud, especially when they default to on, and companies will reset settings on a whim.
So what happened next is I had to literally login, and then when I was finally on Windows, I wanted to add a new account because I don't like that Windows doesn't let me set the *username* local to the OS, if you're going to make me login, please let me set the username, I don't want my Windows path to be C:/Users/gianc/Documents or whatever. I rather set that myself, re-configuring all of that after the fact feels like it will break something, and it is not worth it.
So I go to create a new Windows offline account only to be told by the modern Windows 11 UI that I'm on Home edition of Windows, and cannot add users from that software, go to software XYZ from Windows. So I go there... guess what error I got? The same exact error telling me to go back to the previous program. I wound up installing Linux in frustration.
The only reason I don't use Linux is if the drivers stop being supported OOTB by the installer, which has happened to me before. Linux might have its own issues, but at least it's not completely FUBARd despite one of the largest companies pouring millions into its development.
They lock down executables by default, only allowing web sites and their app store.
Guess what company doesn’t have an app? Zoom. The main thing my MIL uses her laptop for!
So I need to change advanced security settings to install one of the most popular apps in the world.
When my aunt bought her a new computer with Windows she couldn't use it properly and complained that she wanted a computer "like the old one". She was equally unable to use Macos in my laptop. Nowadays when people complain about Linux's usability I know that they are normally overstating or talking from prejudice because from a practical point of view no way the usability of any modern distro is significantly behind Windows' or Macos' usability, it's even the opposite I would say.
Software usability discussions are particularly prone to this bias.
EDIT: another fun one is internet discussions about metric vs imperial systems, with one side or the other swearing that one is inherently more "intuitive" for a particular use. Due to some extraordinary coincidence it's always the one the writer grew up with...
In between there is a giant pit with hard/impossible to solve cryptic errors (or no errors and just silent crashed on launch unless you try to open the same app in the terminal). Confusing and half-baked documentation (because there are dozens different way to accomplish the same thing depending on your distro and config, good luck figuring out which is the right one for you) etc. etc.
A lot of these issues are not really "bugs" and just a natural outcome of the decentralized nature of Linux (non-kernel part) development. They can be solved by power users but not by people who are used to much more user friendly workflows on macOS (again IHMO) somewhat less (but still more so than on Linux) on Windows.
I myself using Arch which for more than 14 years now and it is a perfect fit for professions and enthusiasts. But in case of an average user, Fedora.
What I mean with Windows-Users? People which believe they need to install “drivers“ themselves. Which argue against Linux anyway because it doesn’t support the weird „Desktop Metapher“ from Windows 95. And usually argue that weird hardware like 3D-Shutterglasses or some kind of HDR-Something (just insert here some hot new stuff) isn’t supported. The broad majority of users don’t want that and don’t need it. What matters is HiDPI-Scaling (good, with exception of the awful thing named Electron) and easy to configure sound-system (Pipewire nailed it). And unification of which we achieved through Linux, LIBC/LIBSTDC++, Coretuils and finally Systemd and Flatpak. The point here is the chain of parts building upon each other.
Recommendations Stay away from Nvidia. Use old ThinkPads if you have not special requirements. Use printers with AirPrint (IPP-Everywhere).
Teaching I would be happy if people start teaching the users to read the interface (like a book or an info grahic), think and then act. Input, Process, Output. TUIs foster that and I think that is why users accustomed to them love them - and dislike most GUIs and nearly all websites.
What computer courses do for decades? Not teaching users using the interface. They just drill them to click on a specific icon (once, or twice or with the wrong mouse button). Just see them happy when the type “Email” and Linux offers Evolution or Thunderbird. And if they don’t find it two months later? Again “Email”.
The other thing worth mentioning is well, the computers will almost always perform better with a Linux distribution over a bloated Windows install.
When Ubuntu started getting popular I had this same opinion. A lot of my friends would tell me that they gave Linux a try but gave up because of "random things not working" whereas, allegedly, using Windows everything "just works." This didn't sit well with me because I had the opposite experience with Windows.
Until the last couple of years, unfortunately. It's almost always kernel updates, but I had the sound suddenly stop working on a Kubuntu install after a kernel update, and I've had a few cases where the new kernel wouldn't even boot and I had to drop back to the old one.
These types of things are hard to quantify. Maybe there's more random nonsense across all users with Windows than there are with Linux. But kernel updates have started to make me nervous again and that's a step in the wrong direction.
But there are also experienced Windows users and frankly a lot of the garbage added isn't that big of a deal. Yeah, it requires a bunch of configuration work, but after a few hours you can get Windows to more or less work how it's always worked.
Yeah, people like to complain about the amount of time they spend getting Windows to work they want, but they’re willing to spend hours trying to get sleep to work in Linux.
There are plenty of scripts out there to disable as much or as little of the telemetry and everything else as you want, using the Pro or Enterprise editions lets you skip the cloud, and then it just… works.
There’s a certain give and take with all OSes about how much you adapt to it and how much it adapts to you. At work I use a Mac, I have two Linux servers in my closet, and my personal machine runs Windows. They’re each the right tool for their respective jobs, for me.
until the next update rolls out
I've been exactly one of those users, at least until Win10. I'm dreading 11.
So now Windows forces you to use Microsoft account, shoves ads and crapware into your face (even in "pro" version), makes significant part of your vertical screen real estate unusable because of popping up toolbar like in good old days of internet browsers, makes using laptops on battery a mess. They removed a lot more options to tweak the UI. It's just full on assault on usability. It really does seem like they want to get rid of power users so they can continue shoving more ads and dark patterns on remaining ones. Like those Nigerian Prince scammers who make glaring grammar errors in their emails so people with any kind of critical thinking skills won't bother them responding.
If you wonder why I upgraded - I really didn't want to but at some point they must've sneaked a dialog somewhere where I had a habit of clicking through and to my surprise it was Windows 11 from now on. I resisted for a long time but they have won.
- Without a Microsoft account
- With telemetry disabled (as much as is possible anyway)
I haven't seen any ads in the OS... maybe a OneDrive one? I have no idea what you're talking about with a toolbar though, the only thing of size that pops up on mine is the start menu. Unless that's the new search thing I disabled.
I dunno. On balance, I LOVED Windows 7, Windows 8 was a mess, Windows 10 was... more or less just 7 with an uglier and more confusing interface, and if anything, 11 is a step back towards 7 in my mind, both in aesthetics and usability. Though I was also never one for the side taskbar, so if that's your bag, I can absolutely see you not enjoying it being gone. Other positives:
- They're finally reunifying settings into a single interface, hopefully they finish this time before starting a new one
- New display configuration options are much more sanely organized
- I've had just, WAY fewer issues with drivers in general
Some negs:
- Audio settings are now in five places, any of which can and can not apply to whatever you're doing, seemingly on the fly
- They replaced the context menu with a different context menu that's only slightly different and instead of just carrying over old options with some sensible defaults, hid them in a sub-context context menu which just... ugh
MacOS is still bae though. And that's probably why I like 11 okay is because it feels distinctly like Microsoft chasing Apple with regard to OS design. But as someone who would definitely consider myself a power user, I have no issues using 11. It's an improvement on 10, IMO, which was a distinct downgrade from 7 but itself was a massive upgrade from the train-wreck that was 8, so overall the trajectory is acceptable.
Windows 8 was awful and I refused to use it. However, Windows 10 was really good relative to Windows 8 primarily because it continued some of the good underlying tech Windows 8 brought with it, but was an acknowledgement by MS that the UI/UX needed to be user focused. It wasn't completely there...for example, the Candy Crush ads were still there in the start menu, but the direction relative to 8 was good. However, Windows 11 (and moreso Edge) shows that MS never really had that realization and continues to see their software not as tools for the users to use to simplify and improve their lives but as "products" to be used exactly as MS wants us to use it.
My disillusionment with macOS also lies with this attitude.
For me, Linux is the only desktop OS to be used by choice anymore.
I wish microsoft maintained a version of windows "professional " without all the 10,11 crap/adware and with win7 ui. Even if it costs more
I used to dual boot Windows and Linux, but the most recent version of Windows I tried (11 I think?) really pissed me off during the setup process, mainly by persistently badgering me to get a Microsoft account. Between that and Linux getting a lot better at running the (relatively few) games I play, I decided to get rid of Windows and just use that drive as extra storage.
Exceptions are my relatives over age 60, who barely do anything with their computers and should probably just have Chromebooks or iPads + keyboard (god, they could really use the accessibility features...), but are used to computer = walk into Costco or Best Buy and buy a desktop tower.
Most non-gamers who also aren't computer nerds, whom I know, "compute" mainly on their phone anyway. Shit, so do I, and I'm both of those—my Windows machine is just for gaming, nothing else whatsoever. 95+% of everything important that needs some kind of computer, happens on my phone. I bought my last house on it, entirely, LOL.
You will find plenty of Windows, and developers for the users of them.
Linux will be around in server rooms, embedded, and those VMs used by everyone that doesn't want to spend time dealing with dual boot issues on laptops as if it was 2000.
So 72% is probably an underestimation.
The only market share that Microsoft lost in the last decade was in the school market (by Chromebooks) and the POS (by tablets)
If you define "office workers" as people who use Windows then sure. Even if we don't count tech quite a few people still use Macs (of course depends on country area but Apple seems to have very high market share amongst architects (of course not engineers but I think Linux is overrepresented there), designers etc. where I am).
Nope
It's only been somewhat recently that games that support Linux have exploded in numbers. Somewhat coinciding with the release of the steam deck and the massive community it brought with it. There are now launchers for other stores for Linux and more every day.
Still, a lot of gamers don't really have a choice but to at least dual boot into Windows if they want to play some of the most popular games (Fortnite, for one).
Not supported games are mostly online multiplayer ones, and are using extremely intrusive anticheat rootkits. Fortnite is a great example of that. Anticheat devs refuse to support Linux for obvious reasons (too many ways to escape the rootkit).
WSL is great if you have enough RAM, you can now rely on winget to setup your applications, OneDrive is reliable, the Microsoft Store is finally useful with Win32 applications (even SysInternal is now distributed via the store!). The settings panel finally makes sense, though not everything has been migrated yet. Windows updates are way more reliable. Windows PowerToys provides almost everything power users may need. The updated windows management is just awesome, simple to use and provides a good amount of options. Notepad is now a real text editor, the screenshot tool supports recording too, Edge competes with other modern browsers and has some unique features such as windows splitting.
That’s just a subsets of some things that improved, there is way more. But it is fundamentally still Windows, it’s just way more polished.
I currently work remotely for a company that is head-quartered in California. The company issues MacBooks unless you ask for a Windows laptop. Most of my co-workers in California grew up using Macs and love them. Whereas it seems that, for some reason, the majority of the non-Californian employees grew up using Windows.
My current manager came from Microsoft and was the one that pointed this out to me (because, like you, I also have always hated MacOS ... before our company started issuing Windows laptops to those who request them I tried really hard to get used to it and just couldn't). My manager's claim, though I'm not sure how accurate it is, is that Apple seems to have a cultural hold within California, with lots of businesses using them as well as consumers ... but outside of the state Microsoft has the hold. Again, it's a hypothesis, I don't know if there's any validity to it ... but I'm curious if there could be some truth to it.
The other factor (related somewhat but not completely) I think is that Apple has become a status symbol. People who chose Windows were rare, and got lots of shit for picking Windows. The peer pressure made the majority of people either stick with macOS even if they didn't like it, or switch at the refresh cycle (and make sure to announce that was their intention anytime they got shit for having a windows laptop). Usually I was the only one on Linux, and there'd be one other person on Windows who didn't care about the pressue, but 99% of everybody would go with the flow.
But your comment does echo the some point many have repeatedly posted on HN, in Europe most of their colleagues are on Windows. ( Although some people mention UK having higher Mac concentration ) And Mac is an absolute minority, even within the tech sector.
But I have been saying for some time, at the current rate things are going I would not be surprised if Microsoft start to open source a portion of Windows. And the pendulum may swing to their favour once they have captured more of the Cloud and Enterprise revenue.
- They are non IT professionals, who are forced to use Teams and Office and they get it from their Corporate default.
- Users of Windows who must have it due to applications that are not available for other OSs. Professional Audio, Video, Engineering Applications.
- They are students with their first laptop who got Windows installed by default.
- They are part of the well know 2.2% of males and 1.3% of females involved in submission and sadomasochism...
[1] https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement
Then I spend some time disabling ALL of the updates as they generally do more harm than good
Then I make sure to install directory opus...
Then windows isn't too bad especially when I have no choice but to use it for my work (whereas all of my colleagues have constant problems with borked updates and inconsistent interfaces)
to be fair, I bought a laptop with windows 8 ten years ago and I immediately formatted it and manually installed windows 7 on it though it was a tad tough to find drivers as it was a cheapo consumer laptop)
i am from the opposite camp: my first personal computer (not the family one) came with Ubuntu because the SKU was too cheap to come with windows (back when it would've instead shipped with FreeDOS or something).
i've seen the pain in using windows 8 in another computer in the family. but then i also faced much more nightmare scenario with linux (as someone not very technically inclined at the time): from wifi/bt chip not working to zero video out in a hybrid-graphics laptop.
but after toiling through forums (and learning a lot about managing computers), i also managed to get my parents on using ubuntu for their daily tasks. i was not too concerned about edge cases as i had to step in for IT support regardless of the os.
i personally switched back to windows after trying for 5+ years because everything i needed to do "just worked". i cannot say it for an average grandma, but this audience could easily work around the recent privacy bs microsoft has put out. compared to the gymnastics i needed to do in linux, i'd say it is much less of a trivial task, but you sometimes need to keep up with it through subsequent windows updates.
i recently bit the bullet and switched to windows 11. i am unable to use wsl2 or any virtualization because it breaks the ability to undervolt a laptop cpu. combined with recent ml libraries refusing to properly support windows and cater more to people using google colab, i might finally be nudged back to trying out linux, but i am on the fence.
I hated MacOS, and still do mainly because of the Window management, but after using it for work and the hardware being so much better for me than anything I could find PC I finally switched. My desktop is still Linux. Most of the people I know switched to Mac which is how I know I am in a bubble.
Of course, that's a worldwide figure. The regional breakdown will likely show you prevalence more in line with your expectations. Only 62% in the USA, for example.
I grew up a windows user. I downloaded the Windows 7 Beta when I was 12 years old (and still think it's the best UI any OS has ever had). When I was in college I used Linux more, but found that the only reason I used it was as glorified desktop customization software. All of my assignments were in Java and my personal projects were in C.
I switched to a chromebook halfway through college and did all my assignments by SSHing into a rented VPS running Ubuntu. After college I finally got some money and bought some used thinkpads, which I ran Windows on.
My first job out of college we had macbook pros, and I hated those frickin things. The UI was so opinionated and slow with all of its animations. There was no way to disable the paneled desktops and there was no built in package manager or tiling window manager. Their bash version (this was pre-zsh) was an ancient build from 2007 and their coreutils lacked all the neat GNU extensions features (I recommend anybody who uses a macbook immediately install coreutils from homebrew and also upgrade bash). I had a million things I hated about macOS and still do.
Other companies let me choose between a mac and a PC, and I went with PC. My current company gave me a Macbook pro and I haven't turned the thing on in a year. I use my desktop PC for everything. I like powershell, Windows Terminal, Winget/Chocolatey, vcpkg, Visual Studio, and MSVC language features like SAL. DirectX11 blows OpenGL out of the water in terms of syntax without getting as complicated as Vulkan. I prefer the Win32 API Convention of initializing things with structs and getting more descriptive return types to Linux's everything-is-an-int. I don't mind the Windows 11 UI as much as I thought I would but still sometimes customize my taskbar to look like Windows 7 (but it's just not the same).
tl;dr: I like windows, and not because I'm a captive user
Mac OS occasionally at work, in project assigned laptops.
Linux plenty of distributions since getting Slackware 2.0 on 1995's Summer.
Eventually I gave up on the Linux Desktop dream, around Windows 7 timeframe.
I've personally moved to an entirely MacBook based workflow where I have a dock on my table and plug in either my work or personal MBP depending on what I'm doing.
40-50% battery loss overnight while "sleeping". And other irritations galore. I'd forgotten what battery anxiety was like. Good lord.
Got on the MacBook list with IT ASAP. That MacBook lost 40% charge sitting in my backpack—over a week-and-a-half Christmas break. Ahhh, back home. So much more relaxing.
(The OSX mentality was a friendly one to me when we first met and luckily its changes are slower in diminishing usability - they try though, they try persistently! - so my private computer is not a Windows one for about 20 years already. Probably it was Linux now otherwise, quite possibly.)
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Oh, they care. In my experience, Windows users are non-stop complaining about all the bullshit they are submitted to.
They just don't care to fix it.
Edit: SteamOS != Arch Linux[0]
[0] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...
Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS 64 bit
VS
"Arch Linux" 64 bit
Other Ubuntu versions appear to be in the "Other" category.
Arch is in general a quite popular and quite decent distro, and the complexity of using it has decreased quite a lot in my opinion. I still wouldn't recommend it if there's a risk I end up having to handhold the person afterwards though.
it's probably better today, but i definitely recommend a very up to date distro for gaming, and arch is literally the most up to date there is. happy with arch myself, except the nvidia issues, if you run an nvidia gpu i don't recommend it just yet (getting better really quickly though)
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Is there any reliable way to compare distros usage?
* That's a change from 96.56% on Windows to 96.40%. That's a small enough shift to be attributable to noise.
* In the December 2022 survey [0] (one year earlier), Windows had 96.15% share. So to the extent these tiny shifts mean anything at all, the trend for Windows market share was actually up slightly year-on-year.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20230103095707/http://store.stea...
But then again the share increase compared to share of Linux users, is quite large.
Interesting that only 0,06% are using Win 7 which I would name MS' last good OS.
"Steam conducts a monthly survey to collect data", says it on the page.
> Interesting that only 0,06% are using Win 7 which I would name MS' last good OS.
Probably because steam for windows 7, 8 and 8.1 are EOL
> As of January 1 2024, Steam will officially stop supporting the Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 operating systems.
I think it's interesting that there is that many people still on it.
Mainstream end of life was almost a decade ago, Steam dropped support for it, etc. Is there anything that actually still supports 7?
No DirectX 12 support for Win 7. And even games that don't require DirectX 12 now usually support Windows 10 and up. Sometimes because they don't want to test on older OS, but Windows 10 has legitimate API improvements that are worth taking advantage of.
On top of that of course the general security reasons not to use an unmaintained OS release.
Above it, the survey says that Win 7 64 bit is at 0.68%.
Those who don’t want to tinker and stick to already supported games would probably just run SteamOS to begin with (or a proprietary OS).
The biggest remaining issue is anticheats for some competitive games
As for it being a numbers game, neither Apple nor Valve release direct hardware sales numbers, so only they will know.
However, Windows may be in trouble with more tech-literate people who do know how to change it. I can only speak for myself, but I've been a Windows user since 95. All but one of my programming jobs over the last 20 years have also been working on Windows. But I really dislike the direction Microsoft are taking and I find Windows to be terribly slow these days, with each version seemingly worse than the previous one. So I decided to look elsewhere.
A couple of months ago I bought a new laptop with the express intention of running Linux on it and giving it a good college try (I didn't want to mess around with dual-booting and I still need Windows on my main PC for work... for now). I know very little about Linux, but I've decided I'm not going to use Windows past 10 so it's time to find something else.
I went with Debian running dwm (Debian because I value stability over everything else, and dwm because I like the suckless philosophy) and it's honestly surprised me how good it's been. It's SO snappy. Everything is instant. It's really been a breath of fresh air.
I was especially dreading programming since I've solely used Visual Studio since Visual C++ 4.0 and don't really know anything else. Anyway, I went all-in and started learning Vim, GDB, and Make, and boy do I feel like I've been missing out. I'm really enjoying programming again, which for me has just become a job over the years.
Anyway, my point is, if tech-literate people are willing to give Linux a try, I wonder how many of them would be as surprised as I was and may make the switch permanently. With Windows getting worse, and Linux getting better, maybe more than ever.
When you know enough bash to (without having to look it up every time) write a command that filters (sed) and parses (awk, cut) and then loops (while, for) you will be amazed at what you can do and how quickly you can do it. Then add Vim and you can fly through tasks near the speed of thought.
In summary, I think you've made a great choice!
Would be curious to see stats for e.g. subset of GPU-accelerated devices which can be detected in JS. Not as a true bot-filter of course, but as a uniform and widely-available metric biased towards real users.
I genuinely think Windows got worse, and Linux people started recommending Fedora instead of Ubuntu/Debian-branch.
Microsoft pushes us away, good Linux distros keep us from going back.
Maybe if they defaulted to plasma mobile?
I don't see most casual users plugging a keyboard and mouse into the steam deck.
it won't be because linux became better than windows,
but because windows became worse than linux.
One day we'll look back at the legacy pile of self contradicting nonsense that Windows is and wonder how we ever used it productively.
For one, how do we define Linux desktop? ChromeOS is a distribution of Linux, unlike say Android even advertising official support for a Debian container to run Linux desktop software, and while it lacks GNU utils, Alpine does too and yet we still include it in this category...
Next is the whole way we're counting the supposed number of Linux computers: user agents. There's zero reason for browsers to provide true and specific user agents, in fact, true user agents often yield broken sites (like YouTube assuming ARM PCs are all a specific Chinese smart TV) or pose a great privacy risk. Certainly a significant percentage of Linux users made the choice against it, either by themselves or as a browser default.
Then there's the fact specific demographics have their own distribution of platforms. For example, StackOverflow developer survey showed 40.23% of developers prefer Linux for personal use, compared to 31.07% who prefer MacOS. The absolute numbers matter little if your users in particular tend to be on a certain platform.
As a complete outsider, it might seem odd.
But I think tech people recognize this as referring to "OS's that aren't Windows or Mac".
Do they? The metric includes "Unknown" and "Other" not referred to in this, representing another 5% of activity.
However, what the OP seems to be saying is that interpreting anything from the metric and trying to communicate that interpretation with others is pointless. Not even the linked article can decide whether Linux desktop penetration is 4% or 6%, and that's just one person. Good luck when you add a second person with their own feelings.
Started getting very frustrated with the way windows treats its users. It’s simply a non starter for any serious user these days; what with the ridiculous resetting of all bing settings periodically, the non stop abuse of your login mode (live vs local), and man every time that fucking Out Of Box Experience wizard would start and interrupt your login I would nearly shit myself with annoyance.
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Recently took a position on an all Linux dev project, totally removed windows from my life (and kids). Whole house runs Linux now.
Very happy not going back.
If Linux weren't always behind the door threatening Windows, surely we would have today as the only option a hiper restricted OS with a terrible performance, a huge pice tag and horrible terms of use(well... this is already the case).
On the flip side, look how much Microsoft is losing to Linux in the server space. Consumers don't care what servers their favorite sites and services are running on: they don't have to manage it.
Probably not. The body of the article reports 6.24% desktop Linux penetration already.
The 4% reported in the headline refers to browsers which report Linux in the user-agent string. That is more down to browser choice than kernel choice. Specifically, a popular Linux browser has chosen to omit "Linux" from its default user-agent claim, hence the discrepancy.
It may be that developers and hackers are drawn to certain browsers, but that is beyond the subject of Linux.
Also, it shows the power of defaults and just showing up. Windows is as big as it is because Microsoft made the deals with OEMs 30+ years ago to ship their software as the default option. Macs would likely be an also-ran if Apple wasn't standing behind their hardware, both in terms of the hardware itself and the sales/support channel, as much as they are (just look at the relative success of their retail stores vs. the relative failure of Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc., in the same space).
I'm tech support for my wife's Win11 laptop, and this is rapidly becoming not the case. Microsoft is building bridges across its most.
Looking at their earnings, it is going pretty well.
The disadvantage of propietary software is that you are at the mercy of how the company decides to maintain and develop their software. And they might do undesirable things towards their users. Like displaying adds, tracking / profiling their user's personal data. Changing the pricing. This typically happens when they gain enough market share and have enough users vedor-locked into their software.
And the vendor lock-in also makes it harder for users to make the software work with other 3rd party software. So generally propietary software isn't easy to combine with third party software, unless the company has a commercial incentive to support it. But often one of the reasons for the software to be propietary is because of the vendor lock-in. So that you will use all software from 1 company that all works well together, but doesn't work (as well) when trying to combine it with third party software.
Why would you say that? Take a look at the trend plot shown at the link. The trend started increasing markedly about two years ago. I wouldn't think it would suddenly flatline. At least I hope it doesn't.
Which long term libre software helps them do. Without it companies just keep stealing the open source features and moving the target of "good".
I don't expect someone out there to just make it work for everyone else, but outside specialized situations like gaming hardware, or phones, I don't see anyone really putting the work into appealing to the mass of windows users, at least not as far as covering all the bases that you would need to cover to really think about getting people to move.
MacOS is probably the most organized effort and there they are, and they don't cover all the windows features exactly.
That's not a knock on anyone here, just that they're maybe playing defense vs no no real organized effort.
No. I've been using Linux since 2007 and spent most of my career so far in the Linux space. My goal has never been to convert Windows users to Linux. I don't care what others use so long as it doesn't impact me. I just want to make Linux better, because I am also a Linux user, and want my own experience to be better. If my work means someone has a pleasant experience and converts, then great, the more the merrier. But it's not my goal. So I think you're right, we're not trying to get people to move from Windows. We're just trying to make something we want to use.
Linux desktop plays defense against itself. As long as linux is heavily CLI dependent to get stuff done, it's going to be stuck in sub 10% penetration. I don't see this changing either because the people who maintain linux love linux the way it is.
Don't get me wrong, linux is extremely powerful, but it's gate kept behind a fetishization of archaic and cryptic command line interfaces.
I think Lennox really opens up for windows users when they understand that everything is a Linux terminal command.
When you go into the GUI and change your display resolution, that is a terminal command. Etc.
This is the same for extremely popular things like VS Code, where all the extensions are super cool, most of them are also terminal commands or have some semblance.
However, I can agree with you that this distinction is never clearly explained. And the majority of windows users have no idea, so they come over to Lennox and don’t understand why things might look strange, or require a terminal.
Windows is a consumer OS, which is terrible for engineering, less centered around CLIs but nevertheless having a few even more cryptic ones tacked on like afterthoughts or a legacy hoarding exercise.
CLIs will always be more powerful than GUIs. They tap into what the OS actually is. The GUI is an illusion.
The shocking bit is that Linux is even still alive, given the graveyard of Microsoft competitors.