Windows 11 Market Share Keeps Declining

Aurelius said:
Windows 11 isn't that terrible, but Microsoft is definitely keeping up its tradition of swinging between great and mediocre OS releases since Windows 98. By that token I suspect Windows 12 will be amazing.
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My take is that pretty much everything I dislike about Windows 11 I already disliked about Windows 10.

Forced unremovable phone/tablet apps, Cortana, pushing the Windows Store, pushing the Microsoft account, Xbox shit integrated into Windows, cloud integration, data collection and spying, etc. etc.

Windows 11 is no worse than Windows 10. Now, some of the new Co-Pilot and ads integration may change my perspective here, but really what I hate about Windows 11 I already hated about Windows 10. To get back to an OK Microsoft OS, I have to go all the way back to Windows 7 when they mostly let Windows be a local operating system (like every computer operating system should be), mostly without a forced ecosystem and all of that junk.

...but Windows 7 went EOL in 2015, so I can't justify using that anymore for lack of security patching.

So I don't understand peoples opposition when it comes to moving from Windows 10 to Windows 11. Everything bad about Windows 11 is already there in Windows 10, so what do you have to lose?
 
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Zarathustra[H] said:
My take is that pretty much everything I dislike about Windows 11 I already disliked about Windows 10.

Forced unremovable phone/tablet apps, Cortana, pushing the Windows Store, pushing the Microsoft account, Xbox shit integrated into Windows, cloud integration, data collection and spying, etc. etc.

Windows 11 is no worse than Windows 10. Now, some of the new Co-Pilot and ads integration may change my perspective here, but really what I hate about Windows 11 I already hated about Windows 10. To get back to an OK Microsoft OS, I have to go all the way back to Windows 7 when they mostly let Windows be a local operating system (like every computer operating system should be), mostly without a forced ecosystem and all of that junk.

So I don't understand peoples opposition when it comes to moving from Windows 10 to Windows 11. Everything bad about Windows 11 is already there in Windows 10, so what do you have to lose?
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I'm actually upgrading my work computer to it now. Gonna have to learn it, might as well be familiar with it before we have to start transitioning users.

My main dislikes are pretty much all UI based, the Settings app is still half baked an they've made it more difficult to use legacy Control Panel interfaces to deal with those shortcomings.
 
Same ole song, "Heck no, we won't go!!" You don't have a choice, different song in a year.
 
I had no problem with Windows 10, but I wanted features like DirectStorage, so I switched to 11. The only thing I don't really like is the changes to the Start menu and right-click context menus, but other than that I haven't had many issues. I haven't noticed any ads anywhere, but I'm running Pro and I also have AdGuardHome on my network.
 
Aurelius said:
Windows 11 isn't that terrible, but Microsoft is definitely keeping up its tradition of swinging between great and mediocre OS releases since Windows 98. By that token I suspect Windows 12 will be amazing.
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Windows 10 wasn't great. Just not bad enough to keep people away. MS has been playing two steps back one step forward since 7. So if W12 will be a thing it will be one step up from 11, but still one down from 10.
 
cjcox said:
Same ole song, "Heck no, we won't go!!" You don't have a choice, different song in a year.
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What do you think this is, the tyranny of microsoft?

If and when I choose to upgrade to W11 I'm pretty sure it will be my choice. I know for a fact that I'm not spending money to fulfill MS's arbitrary CPU requirements. And I sure as hell am not going to bother with workarounds to get an OS installed that offers a much worse user experience. The ball is with MS, not with me.

And yes, I'll run W10 beyond end of support if I have to. You don't think I did that with 7? Guess again. I'll enjoy the seething of MS white knights while they label me worse than an actual hamas terrorist for using an OS beyond its planned obsolescence.
 
sk3tch said:
You guys do realize Windows 11 can never replace Windows 10 as most of those Windows 10 devices can't even run Windows 11 due to the new hardware requirements. So there's really no news there, it is by design - for better or for worse. TPM modules and all of that...
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Just wait till company evergreen projects come around and then the mad dash a month before Win 10 is EoL and companies panic to get to Win 11...
 
M76 said:
What do you think this is, the tyranny of microsoft?

If and when I choose to upgrade to W11 I'm pretty sure it will be my choice. I know for a fact that I'm not spending money to fulfill MS's arbitrary CPU requirements. And I sure as hell am not going to bother with workarounds to get an OS installed that offers a much worse user experience. The ball is with MS, not with me.

And yes, I'll run W10 beyond end of support if I have to. You don't think I did that with 7? Guess again. I'll enjoy the seething of MS white knights while they label me worse than an actual hamas terrorist for using an OS beyond its planned obsolescence.
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I did with 7 too. I had bought a patcher to extend another year beyond EOL. Still on 10 now too, not enough stuff uses direct storage to make me care to update.
 
M76 said:
And yes, I'll run W10 beyond end of support if I have to. You don't think I did that with 7? Guess again. I'll enjoy the seething of MS white knights while they label me worse than an actual hamas terrorist for using an OS beyond its planned obsolescence.
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To be fair - as much as I hate being beholden to a company to tell me when a product is artificially EOL:ed - it is a really bad idea to use any software beyond its period of active security patching in our modern "everything is always online" era.

It's not the 90's anymore. Zero-day exploits are real. This is how botnets form, and how people get their bank and other accounts compromised.
 
As a follow up, the update is complete on my work PC. And Microsoft had the temerity to move my very limited number of pinned Start items into a "Your Win 10 Apps" and replace them with what they think I might want along with a bunch of stuff that I know I stripped out of the previous install.

The uneducated idiots they keep hiring for their UI/UX stuff are the real problem.
 
sadsteve said:
You forgot about Windows 8.0! It was Windows 8.0 that got me to switch to Linux as my main OS. I now have a Windows VM, mostly for the games that won't work under Linux.
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I rather enjoyed windows 8, Especially When the 8.1 update dropped. The Boot straight to desktop option was great. And 8,8.1 was rock solid. 🤷‍♂️ :cool:
 
Teenyman45 said:
Nope. Now that I am back in the office, I just went to Windows Update via the start menu and while Windows has informed me that my copy of 10 Pro is up to date, the Win 11 dialogue box contains the following: "[t]his PC doesn't currently meet the the minimum system requirements to run Windows 11 Get the details and see if there are things you can do in the PC Health Check app."
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then you dont have tpm or secure boot or both enabled. that system is fully 11 compliant, IF configured correctly.
 
M76 said:
What do you think this is, the tyranny of microsoft?

If and when I choose to upgrade to W11 I'm pretty sure it will be my choice. I know for a fact that I'm not spending money to fulfill MS's arbitrary CPU requirements. And I sure as hell am not going to bother with workarounds to get an OS installed that offers a much worse user experience. The ball is with MS, not with me.

And yes, I'll run W10 beyond end of support if I have to. You don't think I did that with 7? Guess again. I'll enjoy the seething of MS white knights while they label me worse than an actual hamas terrorist for using an OS beyond its planned obsolescence.
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Obviously people can run unsupported and without security and driver updates for as long as they wish. You are correct.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
To be fair - as much as I hate being beholden to a company to tell me when a product is artificially EOL:ed - it is a really bad idea to use any software beyond its period of active security patching in our modern "everything is always online" era.

It's not the 90's anymore. Zero-day exploits are real. This is how botnets form, and how people get their bank and other accounts compromised.
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Zero day exploits exist in all OS-es, that's why they are called zero days. You think between the monthly update Tuesdays there are no zero day exploits for W11?

It is a myth that EOLed softwrae means you are definitely getting hacked. But of course it is convenient for MS and co, to let people believe that.

In order for vulnerabilities to become actual attack vectors first you need to run malicious code that exploits the vulnerability. Which is almost always an user error that can happen with any OS and is not restricted to EOL versions. Windows 7 computers don't just turn into botnets on their own. Even XP won't unless you open it up directly to the internet with a public IP.

Botnets don't compromise bank accounts, they are used for ddos attacks. The most common method for compromising accounts is social engineering, that requires no vulnerabilities. And getting you to run malicious code on your PC is also a form of social engineering.

A patched OS is only safer by virtue of less exploits actually working on it. But patched exploits tend to be circulated less anyway. You should never rely on your OS to protect you from malicious actors, whether fully patched or not.
 
sk3tch said:
An under 1% shift both ways and all of a sudden Windows 11 has the sky falling? Fake news.
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11 is pure shit, plain and simple. Wait, you’re referencing market share? Well, we can both be right. It’s pure shit and the article is fake news.
 
Prince Valiant said:
What is upgraded in W11 compared to 10 for the average user?
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Not a ton. I can give you a big list if you like but most of it is pretty minor. For users here, the biggest thing is better HDR support and general graphics pipeline improvements. If you game, particularly in HDR, Windows 11 is better. However in general it is a very minor update. A lot of OSes have reached that point where new versions just don't bring that much new, because they are already doing all the things pretty well. Plus with the rolling updates they were doing to 10, new features got introduced from time to time.

I recommend everyone go to 11 because it works well, and 10 is going out of support, but it also isn't something that is going to bring some amazing new features to most people. It's just minor changes. For a long time at work we were only upgrading if people asked (almost nobody did) and just using it on new system builds. Now we are migrating people over since EOL is coming up but it isn't a big deal for most people.
 
GoldenTiger said:
Same. The big whining was about the full-screen start menu, but that never was really an issue.
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It was a problem of you used Windows 8 in an RDP environment, that stupid full screen menu never scaled correctly and boy howdi did the Matrox GPU’s in most servers hate it, just wouldn’t render correctly.
 
GoldenTiger said:
I'm old enough to remember the rage about windows 10 and how it sucked so badly no one would ever switch to it from windows 7... As well as every other windows version in existence going back.
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Nobody was upset for switching over to Windows 10. There were good reasons not to, like some software isn't compatible with Windows 10, but otherwise Windows 10 was solid. It was also a breath of fresh air over Windows 8 and 8.1. The problem with Windows 10 was the telemetry data collection, which people found ways around it at first. Then many updates later and anything you did to remove the data collection would get reverted with new updates.
 
DukenukemX said:
Nobody was upset for switching over to Windows 10. There were good reasons not to, like some software isn't compatible with Windows 10, but otherwise Windows 10 was solid. It was also a breath of fresh air over Windows 8 and 8.1. The problem with Windows 10 was the telemetry data collection, which people found ways around it at first. Then many updates later and anything you did to remove the data collection would get reverted with new updates.
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Nah man, there were LOTS of people (well, angry Internet nerds) who were upset. I saw more than a few posts here of "I'm never switching off 7, 10 sucks, MS sucks, your face sucks!" kind of thing. Has happened with every version of Windows I've ever seen. Nerds rage that the new one sucks, they are gonna stay, or switch to Linux, or whatever. A few do, most eventually migrate and then forget they ever hated on the new Windows and decide it is great, only to repeat the cycle.

Also nerds seem to love to rage at MS about things that they are 100% ok with from other companies. Like the whole MS account thing. I agree it is stupid, but acting like it is a deal breaker is silly because 99,999/100,000 of the people screaming about it are using an Android or iPhone which is being used with a Google or Apple account. Somehow when Google does it, it's fine, but when MS does it, it's a massive affront.
 
DukenukemX said:
The problem with Windows 10 was the telemetry data collection, which people found ways around it at first. Then many updates later and anything you did to remove the data collection would get reverted with new updates.
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sure, but normies dont care.
 
I used to think that any supported version of Windows is good enough for many uses. Windows 11 has changed my opinion. Everything I read about Windows 11 seems awful. (I've never actually used it though.)
 
the_servicer said:
I used to think that any supported version of Windows is good enough for many uses. Windows 11 has changed my opinion. Everything I read about Windows 11 seems awful. (I've never actually used it though.)
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There's nothing wrong with the OS itself. I actually like Windows 11 compared to 10. The UI is actually nice looking, which it hasn't been since Windows 7, imo. Microsoft just keeps making it suck with bloatware and AI crap. The bloatware is easily removed. The AI stuff remains to be seen.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Surprisingly, Windows 11 Market Share Keeps going down, allowing Windows 10 to climb above the 70% mark.

Even with previous unpopular releases (like Windows 8) their market share didn't decline until after their successors were launched.


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It's a little puzzling as to what is going on here. Are people just moving back to Windows 10? If so, why?
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I think some people may be getting out in front of the fact Win 11 24H2 is going to enforce some new processor requirements.. so if you have been running a bypass to get windows 11 it may well make sense to back to window 10 before this happens?

I am not a fan of the ads and whatnot, and they are bullsh*t but at least so far it is a couple clicks into settings to turn this stuff off, or a group policy..etc. Hopefully microsoft will get nervous and back off with the ads... but they aren't really that much of a problem (so far, as that could obviously change?)
 
HockeyJon said:
Remember back in the day when we used antivirus programs to hunt down and eliminate spyware that were tracking our every move and sending data back to the mothership, completely invading our privacy? And then Microsoft saw that spyware and decided to turn it into an operating system?
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Lol great analogy. ...and people are willingly installing it. I'm still on 8.1 and will find a way to put it in a Linux VM, once I'm forced to.

Sycraft said:
What it means is people will just not bother to boot into their other partition because it's inconvenient.
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That's basically what happened to me. Plus, Linux would randomly update itself or something and randomly stop booting. Only real solution is a VM.

sadsteve said:
You forgot about Windows 8.0! It was Windows 8.0 that got me to switch to Linux as my main OS. I now have a Windows VM, mostly for the games that won't work under Linux.
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8's Metro interface was horrible, but nothing that ClassicShell couldn't fix. The core was a more stable/secure Windows 7. Unfortunately, it also became less supported with drivers.
 
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sleepeeg3 said:
Lol great analogy. ...and people are willingly installing it. I'm still on 8.1 and will find a way to put it in a Linux VM, once I'm forced to.
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Unfortunately there isn't much in terms of choice for most people. Linux doesn't run everything most people need to run and requires more computer literacy.

I'm running Windows 11 myself. If it were up to me, I'd still be on 7, but the support is gone. In any case, shout out to Lakados for giving me the heads up on the ability to turn off telemetry, so it's MARGINALLY less annoying now.
 
HockeyJon said:
Unfortunately there isn't much in terms of choice for most people. Linux doesn't run everything most people need to run and requires more computer literacy.

I'm running Windows 11 myself. If it were up to me, I'd still be on 7, but the support is gone. In any case, shout out to Lakados for giving me the heads up on the ability to turn off telemetry, so it's MARGINALLY less annoying now.
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You can disable a surprising amount of BS in Windows 11.
 
Shoganai said:
Everyone hates something. But what's happening to Windows 11 is like nothing that's come before it, especially with the implementation of this insane, privacy-violating AI.
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I'll give you that. The rumored ads and the tracking stuff is bad - but easily blocked by any technical [H] member. The day to day use IMO is better than ever.
 
sk3tch said:
I'll give you that. The rumored ads and the tracking stuff is bad - but easily blocked by any technical [H] member. The day to day use IMO is better than ever.
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Hopefully. I can strip down 11 to a very minimalist and clean install and it's perfectly fine. I'm hoping this AI garbage isn't massively ingrained into the core of the OS somehow.
 
It is an operating system that allows the user to use their computer but, beyond that, it is 2024 and no one cares any longer. That and the fact that Windows 11 market share is probably not shrinking but 10's market share is increasing due to enterprise usage. However, 11 will be eventually used by enterprise as well, just simply the way it is.
 
pendragon1 said:
try tiny11
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I usually use Rufus, but I'll check that one out as well.

ManofGod said:
It is an operating system that allows the user to use their computer but, beyond that, it is 2024 and no one cares any longer. That and the fact that Windows 11 market share is probably not shrinking but 10's market share is increasing due to enterprise usage. However, 11 will be eventually used by enterprise as well, just simply the way it is.
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Yes, and like pendragon1 said a page back, eventually Windows 10 PCs are going to die, and most PCs will at least have Windows 11 or newer on them. It's the circle of life.
 
Disclaimer: I have not read previous posts.

I used Windows 11 for quite some time. It was... manageable at best. I had to use registry edits and/or third party modifications to unlock standard Windows features that should be there by default but aren't. However, Microsoft was constantly "patching" these workarounds, and ultimately made some features impossible to use.

At that point, I switched back to Windows 10 on my work machine, and have moved exclusively to Linux on my personal machine.
 
Sycraft said:
Also nerds seem to love to rage at MS about things that they are 100% ok with from other companies. Like the whole MS account thing. I agree it is stupid, but acting like it is a deal breaker is silly because 99,999/100,000 of the people screaming about it are using an Android or iPhone which is being used with a Google or Apple account. Somehow when Google does it, it's fine, but when MS does it, it's a massive affront.
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People choosing to trade privacy for convenience features on Android or iPhone does not entitle Microsoft to anything. If you let a neighbor borrow your lawnmower, is that a green light for any neighbor to help themselves to anything in your garage whenever they feel like? The resistance to many of MS's controversial Windows changes is more nuanced than reductive "people don't like change".

Where Windows is concerned, there's a pattern of: 1) feature removal, 2) coasting and not innovating, 3) chasing trends like departed trains. Be it SaaS and pay-forever subscriptions, Cloud and online accounts, Appstores, mobile devices and UI's, AR/VR, and most recently, LLM AI: someone else innovates (or just executes better), it gets popular, and Microsoft tries bolting it onto Windows, often with more undisclosed data collection. Except they do it half-assed, and then eventually just kill or cancel because it never catches on with users. It doesn't catch on either because the featureset is lacking, or never belonged on Windows to begin with.
 
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Sycraft said:
For users here, the biggest thing is better HDR support and general graphics pipeline improvements. If you game, particularly in HDR, Windows 11 is better
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The only case where W11 has an actual benefit is when running CPUs that require the new scheduler to work effectively. The graphics pipeline offers no measurable difference in performance. And the HDR benefit is basically the auto hdr mode which adds HDR to non-HDR games, which is ill advised at best IMO.

Then there is directstorage which is supposed to improve loading times. 5x faster sure sounds cool in theory, but when you realize it means 0.4s instead of 2s it becomes beyond irrelevant. Definitely not worth dealing with all the other baggage that comes with 11 for this.
 
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