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Windows 11 Market Share Keeps Declining

Good time to resurrect this.. Sitting here on a disaster recovery exercise and while I wait.. hit up Steam hardware survey.. and low and behold.. things not looking good for Windows 11...
From January - February 2025.. that looks to be a 20% swing or no?? 10% decline for Windows 11 with 10% uptick for Windows 10

OS.JPG
 
jlbenedict said:
Good time to resurrect this.. Sitting here on a disaster recovery exercise and while I wait.. hit up Steam hardware survey.. and low and behold.. things not looking good for Windows 11...
From January - February 2025.. that looks to be a 20% swing or no?? 10% decline for Windows 11 with 10% uptick for Windows 10

View attachment 715506
Click to expand...
A lot of hardware can't even upgrade to Windows 11 without some fudging, so there's that.
 
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What is actually equally interesting is both mac and Linux % decline as well ... overall (except for my boy Linux Mint which did see a slight increase)...Of course these both have very small overall percentages anyway.

The spike in windows 10 64bit this close to the Oct 25 date is somewhat odd however.. maybe microsoft is going to make a bunch of money on extended support for windows 10? I have a couple computers that don't meet windows 11 requirements.. I will probably move these to mint as I had already done w/ my Thinkpad T450S I got for free awhile ago.

1741485715294.png
 
atarione said:
I have a couple computers that don't meet windows 11 requirements.. I will probably move these to mint as I had already done w/ my Thinkpad T450S I got for free awhile ago.
Click to expand...
Just upgrade using a USB installer made with Rufus and disable all the requirements.
 
Shoganai said:
A lot of hardware can't even upgrade to Windows 11 without some fudging, so there's that.
Click to expand...
I wonder if the spike in Windows 10 64bit is people that used various workarounds getting edgy about some of microsoft's moves to clamp down on some of the Windows 11 requirement bypass stuff, and just rolling back to windows 10?
 
Shoganai said:
Just upgrade using a USB installer made from Rufus and disable all the requirements.
Click to expand...
Yeah... for what I need these computers for Mint will be totally fine... I like Linux and these older computers will run better w/ mint than they would with 11 or 10 for that matter anyway.
 
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atarione said:
I wonder if the spike in Windows 10 64bit is people that used various workarounds getting edgy about some of microsoft's moves to clamp down on some of the Windows 11 requirement bypass stuff, and just rolling back to windows 10?
Click to expand...
Possibly, but I've yet to come across a computer in which the bypass didn't work.

atarione said:
Yeah... for what I need these computers for Mint will be totally fine... I like Linux and these older computers will run better w/ mint than they would with 11 or 10 for that matter anyway.
Click to expand...
I also like Mint, and Proton has come a long way.
 
HockeyJon said:
People are switching because they have to, no necessarily because they want to. I’d wager you’d still have a solid number of people who will tell you they’d still be on 7 if it still received security and vulnerability updates.
Click to expand...

I would happily go back to 7 if i could. that being said, 11 has not been terrible for me, though i've had to install an app just to get a functional search. That to me is the most egregious problem with these modern windows versions.
 
Shoganai said:
When you disable 90% of all the useless garbage ...

... it stills sucks.
Click to expand...
Seriously, even on modern high-end systems Windows 11 has so much bloat and lag, it's crazy that a 10+ core CPU can easily be maxed out by its processes.
Never saw anything like this on Windows 10, even on MUCH lower-end systems with inferior specs.

No other modern OS in the last decade operates the way Windows 11 does.
But then again, it is such a small percentage of Microsoft's profits that it almost doesn't matter any more.
 
jlbenedict said:
Not surprised.. Windows 11 is as bad as cable television...ads shoved down your throat every time you turn around.
Click to expand...
Not seen any ads granted i am on pro not home i have not used a home version of windows since early windows 7 and i upgraded that my primary os is debian 13. With linux getting better and better when it comes to gaming do to steam windows market share was bound to decline. I said this years ago that until linux was game ready it would never gain popularity it was a tinkerers os a second pc os. Now here we are a decade or so later and linux is gaining ground. The only place your going to see windows only for a while yet is in 3d content creation as no serious game studio uses blender they use 3d studio max and other currently windows only 3d content creating apps.

Many games are being brought to linux by the developers themselves as unreal engine for example has the capability baked in to compile for well basically any platform from phone to windows to linux and consoles.
 
techie81 said:
I literally just reformatted Windows 11 (new build) back to Windows 10 after about 3 months. 11 is an abomination.
Click to expand...
Agree, unless you spend mucho, mucho time with tweak programs, registry patches, etc., etc.which take time to research and test out. Lots of these make Win11 UI look more like Win 10. :D If you added everything up into just one list, I'll be you will find lots of duplication.
 
If it wouldn’t land me in a crapload of trouble I’d just start sharing out my LTSC image’s.
I’ve been using it now for a solid month on my main gaming rig, and the performance is better in every meaningful way while not having any of the aspects of Windows 11 that annoy me.
I haven’t encountered any issues yet that couldn’t be fixed with PowerShell command and a reboot.

It’s 90% of the way to being the perfect platform for a gaming rig.

I tried making it work with Windows Server but there were too many incompatibles where things would just refuse to run because it wasn’t a supported windows version or it had some minor tie in to the windows store which I could not manage to get working right on the platform.
 
Any time you see a big swing in the numbers that otherwise makes no sense, open the language section and you'll see something like this.

Valve has had long running problems with handling shared PCs in gaming cafe's so that they're only counted once despite having dozens or hundreds of monthly users.

Wild swings will almost always be a large change in the number of systems counted from mainland China (Taiwan uses Traditional Chinese characters instead).

Most of the time the shared gaming PCs will be running older and OSes than the overall userbase.

1741507976273.png
 
Sindalis said:
I would happily go back to 7 if i could. that being said, 11 has not been terrible for me, though i've had to install an app just to get a functional search. That to me is the most egregious problem with these modern windows versions.
Click to expand...

Which app are you using for that? The broken search bar is probably my most salient complaint as well just because I use it all the time out of habit.
 
atarione said:
What is actually equally interesting is both mac and Linux % decline as well ... overall (except for my boy Linux Mint which did see a slight increase)...Of course these both have very small overall percentages anyway.
Click to expand...
I've not ran Steam in almost a year because SOD World of Warcraft. That game is taking up all my time. Maybe this is why HL3 is rumored to be ready for release because Steam hasn't had a killer game from Valve is nearly a decade. Linux users play games outside of Steam, and this is a problem for Valve. But Linux went down even according to Statcounter.
The spike in windows 10 64bit this close to the Oct 25 date is somewhat odd however.. maybe microsoft is going to make a bunch of money on extended support for windows 10? I have a couple computers that don't meet windows 11 requirements.. I will probably move these to mint as I had already done w/ my Thinkpad T450S I got for free awhile ago.
Click to expand...
Probably because people don't want to deal with Windows 11 if they don't have to. There's no consequence to stay on Windows 10.
atarione said:
Yeah... for what I need these computers for Mint will be totally fine... I like Linux and these older computers will run better w/ mint than they would with 11 or 10 for that matter anyway.
Click to expand...
I'm in the middle of trying to slowly switch my machines away from Mint to CachyOS, but I wouldn't recommend CachyOS just because of it's recommendation of KDE Plasma. I'm using KDE Plasma, but it really sucks for game compatibility. This maybe more of a Wayland problem. Linux Mint's Cinnamon uses X11, which just works. You could use CachyOS with Cinnamon since this is a choice, but yea Mint is better for new people to Linux.
Red Falcon said:
But then again, it is such a small percentage of Microsoft's profits that it almost doesn't matter any more.
Click to expand...
If Windows falls apart then Microsoft can't push for their services. Imagine if Android falls apart? Who would use Chrome, Maps, and all the other Google data collection tools? I could easily see Samsung replace Google's crap with their own but likely inferior applications. The problem is that the people at Microsoft are trying to get blood from a stone, or in this case are trying to milk Windows users to the point where they could destroy the Windows ecosystem.
 
mullet said:
I predict more dual boot systems, game on one and use daily on the other.
Click to expand...
Exactly what happened to me when I finally left Win7. I moved to Linux and Win10. Linux is the daily driver, and sometimes for gaming. And then Win10 is for most gaming, and a few scant programs that I can't run natively on Linux, and don't wanna use via WINE or VM. Tried Win11 via VM, didn't care for it.
 
DrezKill said:
Exactly what happened to me when I finally left Win7. I moved to Linux and Win10. Linux is the daily driver, and sometimes for gaming. And then Win10 is for most gaming, and a few scant programs that I can't run natively on Linux, and don't wanna use via WINE or VM. Tried Win11 via VM, didn't care for it.
Click to expand...

Awesome, I just use win11 (stripped down) PS - davinci resolve - Gaming. No personal info at all.
 
I disliked Windows 11 so much I switched back to Windows 7 for a retro system as my daily driver. I didn't particularly care for Windows 10 either, something about adopting it at work before I had upgraded at home kind of ruined it for me. I always feel like I'm following the job every time I'm on 10, not the other way around.
 
The most baffling thing to me about Windows 11 is that two back to back installs the same way on the same hardware can have two totally different performance results. One will be a stuttering mess and the other will be normal with no rhyme or reason.
 
LigTasm said:
The most baffling thing to me about Windows 11 is that two back to back installs the same way on the same hardware can have two totally different performance results. One will be a stuttering mess and the other will be normal with no rhyme or reason.
Click to expand...
Microsoft has lots of bad “default” drivers, sometimes they are on the base image, sometimes they are grabbed during the “Updating” process that happens during install. But Windows 11 will happily install some terrible network or chipset drivers which will certainly lead to corruption down the line which just results in terrible performance.
I’ve generally found that after installing Win11 manually reinstalling some drivers is absolutely required, and afterwards so is sfc /scannow

Things only get worse if it not only installs bad drivers but then enables BitLocker based on those bad drivers, then it’s just a downhill race.

I’ve also frequently found that BIOS and CPU Microcode plays a big part especially on laptops. Older BIOS versions but updated OS tends to break things in subtle ways.

So there are plenty of reasons but they are subtle and annoying as hell.
 
Lakados said:
Win11’s “updating” process it does during installation can and will bring down the wrong drivers, or the image itself does. It will happily install some terrible network drivers which will certainly lead to corruption down the line which just results in terrible performance.
I’ve generally found that after installing Win11 manually reinstalling some drivers is absolutely required, and afterwards so is sfc /scannow

Things only get worse if it not only installs bad drivers but then enables BitLocker based on those bad drivers, then it’s just a downhill race.

I’ve also frequently found that BIOS and CPU Microcode plays a big part especially on laptops. Older BIOS versions but updated OS tends to break things in subtle ways.

So there are plenty of reasons but they are subtle and annoying as hell.
Click to expand...

Bro what happened to you post? I saw it pop up then it was gone.

Anyways, I don't let Windoze do any of my drivers. After many moons of getting screwed like this I force offline local account and use gpedit to shut off driver updates through Windows Update. I install everything manually before I connect to the internet. But the update process does seem directly related to the performance issues, you're right about that. I find the biggest deviation happens when it does one of the "major" monthly updates. If it takes it like 30 minutes to do it, its gonna be bad.
 
LigTasm said:
Bro what happened to you post? I saw it pop up then it was gone.

Anyways, I don't let Windoze do any of my drivers. After many moons of getting screwed like this I force offline local account and use gpedit to shut off driver updates through Windows Update. I install everything manually before I connect to the internet. But the update process does seem directly related to the performance issues, you're right about that. I find the biggest deviation happens when it does one of the "major" monthly updates. If it takes it like 30 minutes to do it, its gonna be bad.
Click to expand...
It was unclear so I took it down to clean it up. I’ve mostly “standardized” all my windows machines so the base images now have the correct drivers injected.
The one setting that screws me over more than not is the OEM setting the storage to Raid instead of AHCI, there is something wrong with Windows 11 and some Intel Chipsets so I have to remember to check for that and ensure that it is AHCI.

If it is set to Raid then weird things happen, there’s no two ways about it.
 
Lakados said:
It was unclear so I took it down to clean it up. I’ve mostly “standardized” all my windows machines so the base images now have the correct drivers injected.
The one setting that screws me over more than not is the OEM setting the storage to Raid instead of AHCI, there is something wrong with Windows 11 and some Intel Chipsets so I have to remember to check for that and ensure that it is AHCI.

If it is set to Raid then weird things happen, there’s no two ways about it.
Click to expand...

Ah I got ya.

I'm not super knowledgeable on slipstreaming stuff other than when I made a custom Windows XP ISO for running on way newer hardware than it should, but maybe I should start figuring it out. I would love to just have a base image with all the apps I normally use instead of having to load them one at a time.

I've been forcing myself to use 11 now because both my rigs have Wifi 7 which doesn't work in 10 and its losing support soon enough that I just have to get over it. Sad days.
 
Lakados said:
I’ve generally found that after installing Win11 manually reinstalling some drivers is absolutely required, and afterwards so is sfc /scannow
Click to expand...

What kinds of things does sfc /scannow fix?
Lakados said:
Things only get worse if it not only installs bad drivers but then enables BitLocker based on those bad drivers, then it’s just a downhill race.
Click to expand...
When I do a fresh Windows install, first thing I do, very first thing, is turn off that damned BitLocker.
 
I get that a lot of people want to say on Windows 10. Me, I have 2 reasons why I feel I need to upgrade to Windows 11. I'm not happy about that, but I feel I have no choice.

1. No Windows 10 security updates after October. And NO, I don't want to pay Microsoft about $150 just to put off this upgrade for all of 1 year.
2. I use Office 365 on a daily basis. I use Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop at least 3-4 times a month. After October, I will need Windows 11 to get updates.
3. (bonus reason) I'm not a gamer. I know that makes me a minority in this forum, but it is what it is.
 
On a personal level, I do not have a Windows PC anymore so you can count me out of using Windows 11. Professionally, I do use it everyday but that is good there.
 
philb2 said:
I get that a lot of people want to say on Windows 10. Me, I have 2 reasons why I feel I need to upgrade to Windows 11. I'm not happy about that, but I feel I have no choice.

1. No Windows 10 security updates after October. And NO, I don't want to pay Microsoft about $150 just to put off this upgrade for all of 1 year.
2. I use Office 365 on a daily basis. I use Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop at least 3-4 times a month. After October, I will need Windows 11 to get updates.
3. (bonus reason) I'm not a gamer. I know that makes me a minority in this forum, but it is what it is.
Click to expand...
You will have to eventually upgrade to Windows 11. There's no way around it. Can't recommend Linux because Adobe products run like crap on Linux through Wine. If only Adobe brought their software to Linux. Office 365 can run in a web browser but there's also Libre Office. Not if 365 is absolutely needed. Unless Microsoft wakes up and makes some serious changes, the goal is to move onto Linux. That goal isn't really attainable for anyone needing to use Adobe.
 
DukenukemX said:
You will have to eventually upgrade to Windows 11.
Click to expand...
We are in violent agreement. Adobe software is absolutely essential to what I do, on my PC and in real life.

DukenukemX said:
There's no way around it.
Click to expand...
Again, violent agreement. Please reread what I wrote in post #104
DukenukemX said:
Can't recommend Linux because Adobe products run like crap on Linux through Wine
Click to expand...
Wouldn't even think of trying that.

DukenukemX said:
. If only Adobe brought their software to Linux.
Click to expand...
Sure but the pressure now on the Adobe forum is supporting Snapdragon processors. If you think about it, there isn't just "one" Linux platform. There are many 10s of distros. And Adobe can't justify testing on just-how-many different distros and releases, all of which are probably well under 1% market share. And what about Joe over here, who decides to compile his own distro from sources. Oh, Joe has tweaked the code to "improve it." If I were the QA manager at any decent-sized software company, I would bar the door against Linux.
DukenukemX said:
Office 365 can run in a web browser but there's also Libre Office. Not if 365 is absolutely needed.
Click to expand...
It is for me and my wife.

DukenukemX said:
Unless Microsoft wakes up and makes some serious changes, the goal is to move onto Linux.
Click to expand...
Your goal? I wish it could also be my goal, but I'm dependent on Microsoft AND Adobe.
DukenukemX said:
That goal isn't really attainable for anyone needing to use Adobe.
Click to expand...
 
Shoganai said:
Just upgrade using a USB installer made with Rufus and disable all the requirements.
Click to expand...
until the next big "feature update" and they add even more restrictions and it locks you out at the most inconvenient time like how things usually go.

you or i might be able to handle it, but not sure what i'm going to do with my parents computer and a couple other family/friends i maintain. prob going to grab a used ssd off ebay and use that to install linux and see what they think. and i guess if they don't like it they're just going to have to drop a bunch of money on new parts. personally i don't think it's worth it just for win11 which i think is a pile of crap anyway not to mention all the built in spyware. the worst part is the requirements are fake anyway just put there to, i guess, try and boost pc sales. i hope this bites them in the a$$ hard and we start seeing a mass migration to linux. that or they need to extend win10 support indefinitely like they did with win7. kind of hoping they're just playing chicken.
 
philb2 said:
Sure but the pressure now on the Adobe forum is supporting Snapdragon processors. If you think about it, there isn't just "one" Linux platform. There are many 10s of distros. And Adobe can't justify testing on just-how-many different distros and releases, all of which are probably well under 1% market share. And what about Joe over here, who decides to compile his own distro from sources. Oh, Joe has tweaked the code to "improve it." If I were the QA manager at any decent-sized software company, I would bar the door against Linux.
Click to expand...
Linux is Linux. Distros matter not. If Adobe wanted to release as flatpak only no one would have any issue with that. It also completely removes the idea of haven't to support multiple distros in some way.
Blackmagic specifies RHEL Cent or Rocky OS requirements... though they software works on basically any distro. By specifying Red hat distros they don't have to support pro clients on other distros.
SideFX makers of Houdini support all the major workstation distros Ubuntu Rhel and even very non workstation distros like Mint and Pop. Though they make clear some older workstation distros can't run the latest versions. In my experience people using commercial full on Houdini are on RHEL 99% of the time.
Autodesk does much the same for Maya. Linux requirement is RHEL or Rocky.

My point is the argument of 1000 distros means nothing. Many professioanl companies have official Linux support. Generally they just support RHEL. Anything beyond that will almost always work but isn't "supported". If you can't make your professional software work on IBM computers RHEL. Your just not a very professional company. Adobe really has no excuse for not support RHEL as many of their compeditors do. Official Adobe support would be nice some day, really not sure what their thinking is in not supporting it at this point. So many 3D animation houses and such are on Linux workstations not just servers, clearly they aren't using Adobe... I don't understand why Adobe doesn't go after that business though really considering Linux support at this point is a few days work and a recompile.
 
Has Microsoft screwed up the Windows update process? Back with Win-8 and early Windows 10 it seemed like you could install a lot of the pending updates without having to reboot like you had to on earlier versions of Windows, but for a long time it seems that my Windows 10 license has been changed from Home to Constant Reboot Edition.

I'm clinging to it for as long as I can, anyway.
 
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