Windows 11 market share falls despite Microsoft ad blitz | Windows 10, on the other hand, managed to grow its share of that market

People found out about the Win10 IoT LTSC version, which Microsoft alleges to be supporting for 10 more years.

It comes with basically zero of the M$ bloat that everyone hates, as well. It's just Windows.

I just installed it on my father's new (old) laptop, because he is not ready for Linux yet -- possibly ever.

It has no:

• Cortana
• Copilot
• Windows Media Player
• OneDrive
• Office 365 Nag
• Candy crush, Solitaire collection, etc.
• Ads and nags on the lock screen
• "Finish setting up your device and create a Microsoft Account!!!" nag every X number of bootups
• Xbox Game Bar
• Microsoft Store
• Etc.

It does come with Edge.

Because it does not have the Microsoft Store you have to manually install anything that comes as a store app from the command line. I was taken by surprise that the Duckduckgo browser is packaged this way. But you can still do it. Normal programs install just fine.

Yes, you can use it for gaming.

Edit: I guess I forgot to drop the obligatory link to https://massgrave.dev/ , which is how I found out about this and got it running. Also hosted there is a tool that allows you to... license... various Microsoft products including your shiny new Win10 IoT install.

DO NOT PAY FOR WINDOWS 10 UPDATES.

They're pushing this plan to make people pay to continue to get support for 10 very hard.

Don't fucking do it. Make them eat this loss of a shitty invasive OS that nobody asked for. This trend is evidence that we're in control in this situation, not Microsoft.

Force their hand and make it so they have no choice but to keep supporting Windows 10 for free for five more years.

Look, I'm a Linux user primarily, but that doesn't mean you should just let these corporate fuckholes walk all over you. Windows 10 is ride or die. Make Microsoft pay for trying to fuck you out of a cleaner operating system that is less infested with spyware and actually works half the time.

Not everybody has the time or energy to figure out Linux, but either way, the best way to fight Microsoft is by hitting them square in the pocketbook.

I'll uh ... be over here continuing to use an OS that doesn't <checks notes> show me a full-screen ad.

Our old asses are over here learning mint and Ubuntu on new machines. That wasn’t on our 30s-40s disco card.

It’s fun. Everything looks good, then attach the external monitor to the laptop and it won’t detect. There’s a workaround, there’s almost always a workaround, but these basics of windows are in pieces in Linux.

The basic expectations with windows, like monitor detection, aren’t necessarily there.

Spite is a hell of a fuel though. Oh and I still have my win 10 disc and put a fresh install on another machine.

I work at an MSP and a lot of our clients have to follow specific security compliance standards. Because Windows 10 is eol soon, we've been slowly upgrading folks to 11. I die a little each time I do an upgrade. People, including my coworkers and I, are not happy with it overall, but nobody can do anything because ✨compliance standards✨

An ad blitz doesn't matter if your product is junk. Make something that isn't garbage if you want to retain people, people want good products.

Windows 11 is a privacy invasion. It's the worst OS I have ever used for a day and a half.

Well, Microsoft said way back when that "Windows 10 will be the last version of Windows" so a lot of enterprise went to it. To this day I'm dealing with vendors that have a certified "Windows 10-only" solution. Another funny one is stuff like Ford's FDRS software still only officially supports Windows 10 Pro.

Platform changes and all that are fine, but when Microsoft says basically "This is gonna be your LTS forever" and then bails on it, shit like this is no surprise at all.

"But people love getting spammed with advertisements..." -Shareholders

im forced to use it at work and holy shit. 11 is so heavy for no reason, 8gb of ram is not remotely enough anymore, even if you yank out some of the garbage. theres no apparent change in functionality to justify it.

the ssd smart says its almost at its end, and i suspect its because its constantly swapping. paging file is always full, unless i set it to something big like 8+ gb

What... How is that even possible? Are new machines being sold with 10 instead of 11?

The main problem is that Win11 can only run in special hardware and Microsoft can pry out my potato computer from my cold, dead hands. I won't change my hardware to update my OS.

My PC isn't compatible, so fuck Windows 11

The market share for Win 11 has dropped because people are "downgrading" to Win 10, holding on to that for another year before support runs out.

The Windows computers in our house never upgraded to Win 11.

No surprise there.

Some people are also jumping ship to Linux, fed up of Windows BS all together.

The dip in usage comes just as Microsoft has been forcing full-screen ads onto the machines of customers running Windows 10 to encourage them to upgrade.

Yeah no shit! When my computer does full-screen, disruptive things that I didn't tell it to do, I figure out how to remove that malware. I've been off Windows at home for about a month now, thanks Linux Mint! Getting some games to work has been challenging, but most things have just worked and quite a few work much better!

Performance is up overall, and my confidence that my computer isn't running a bunch of secret ad and spy ware is way up. Hardware like my gamepad and microphone would randomly disconnect and have issues on Windows, all working perfectly now.

Unfortunately I'm still deep in MS land for work, but there's almost a comedic quality to it. Everything's very slow, everyone has constant issues with Teams, or Office online, or Dynamics, or copilot shoving it's tendrils into everything. Watching businesses struggle to keep operating in the face of Microsoft's inadequacy is like being a mechanic watching a motor grind to a halt because the owner/manufacturer replaced all the oil with syrup.

Like yes, it's my problem to fix, but I'm just glad it's not my car.

Not going to change unless Microsoft does a complete 180 on how they're handling Win11 which I don't think they will do because it's just not in their corporate strategy at the moment. I imagine most people are just going to keep using Win10 after the support period ends.

Microsoft seriously needs an upper management shakeup. They have been dropping the ball badly in numerous areas and have their heads lodged too far up their own asses to see it.

Who thought that puting ridiculous minimum requirements so your spyware can work better would mean that lots of people without newer hardware just won't upgrade.

well the market share of Windows 11 has risen significantly on my work laptop, and I can wholehearedly say, I understand why its global market share is falling...... random freezes, random restarts, battery life sliced, random starting up from suspend. it's not great.

meanwhile, Manjaro on my personal Lenovo laptop has been cutting edge with consistent updates for years.

I still fail to see how windows 11 was anything but a collusion scam to sell new hardware.

None of the changes including TPM requirements required a new iteration. Nothing about the underlying NT dropped any of the old and antiquated BS despite Microsoft hiring some morons to advertise the fact on reddit to all the insiders asking questions.

They even let the media pick up a fake report that Windows 11 was related to the Core OS and a brand new kernel was in the works.

If Microsoft wanted a marketing strategy, they could have properly started naming feature updates and adverising them similar to Apple.

8, 10, and 11 have also been a pain on enterprise because Microsoft axed their QA team. I seriously hope any new firms start considering linux desktop as a valid option. All they really need is a vendor to offer a solid distro along with an agreement to rapidly create/deploy any software solution so they don't get scared looking at the cheap entry windows stuff.

The beating will continue until morale increases. - Microsoft PR

I'll stick to Win10 until the end of the support period, just like how I stuck to Win7 as long as I could 😬 That was still my favourite OS, loved Aero 🥺

I am 21 and have been a windows user since I was 6. Windows 10 was the last windows OS I ever used and after that used linux for a while and eventually switched to Mac, and I am glad I did. Windows 11 has a bunch of visual upgrades which just ruin the experience and makes it difficult to navigate around. Also the fact that I need to purchase a new laptop to be able to use it when my old one is perfectly fine.

Look, I don't trust Statista numbers at all.

People are free to disagree on that one, Statista most of all. But what I think is undeniable is that these sub-percentage point changes are entirely within their margin of error (same goes for Steam, incidentally). You can look at trends over time, -and I think it's pretty undeniable Win11 has struggled to onboard the Win10 userbase-, but I wouldn't overreact to these short term updates.

I literally left windows because of the incessant ads for 11. The last straw was them forcing copilot on my windows 10 install, but a lot of other things were bugging me way too much before I kicked the bucket. Thankfully I have the help of a friend that uses Linux daily and my boyfriend who just knows a fuckton about computers, but after finishing the initial setup I haven't really had any issues

When games work so well on Linux these days, it seems to me that there is absolutely no reason for Windows to exist anymore. Why does anyone use it?

The fact that any company is able to show you ads after you PAID for their shit is bonkers to me. Don't get me started on repair and being able to unlock the bootloader on your device. No wonder education is very expensive and extremely hard to attain. They love the uneducated, so they can fuck them hard like that. Fuck all of them.

I sense 12 coming soon if MS wants to EOL 10 without losing customers.

I'm now recommending family members and relatives to switch to Macs if they're not willing to install Linux on their PC.

I'm trying really hard to educate them about how intrusive Windows 11 is. But in the end, it's like Facebook or whatever. They just don't care about their online privacy and how their personal information is handled. Sometimes I don't even know why I try.

It's simple: Ain't nobody got time for your bullshit, Microsoft.

Microsoft, this is like windows vista all over again. Make it less shitty, get rid of all the crap you're pushing and make it faster. Call it windows 12 and if it's good we'll buy it. Worked for XP, worked for 10. How do you still not get this?

The moment I can verify a solution for my music production workflow on Linux, I know that I'm out as well.

I had to make the change to Windows 11 at work, it was certainly a downgrade. Pretty common that there is a massive wait for even the most simple applications to load. Quite often I end up opening multiple copies, because I think the first click to open didn’t register, click again and they all open at once. This is on the same hardware that Windows 10 did fine on.

Microsoft was doing a somewhat ok job at windows with windows7. Then they decided to do stuff like remove media center and remove support for TV tuners and pump up the tracking and assorted idiocies

because windows 2000 was peak windows

Windows 10 no longer being updated by Microsoft is it's biggest selling point

Lol was windows 11 was a scam to make companies pay for future security updates this whole time?

When you "have" to keep making new versions to satisfy market "demand" in the "free" market.

Hmmm.... Maybe people using windows 10 really do love the full screen ads! Yeah! They missed the ads so they went back to windows 10 until they can get those ads in windows 11! Yup! That must be it!

I would double down on full screen unstoppable ads. Maybe one that looks like a BSOD? That would be lovely!

They're still too hardheaded to get it

I wonder if the stats will rise considerably during 2025 with all the business and enterprise environment switching after delaying the upgrade for a few years. We certainly have to do that at work.

I don’t understand how Windows 11 file system/explorer just chugs so much. If you have a folder with more than a dozen or so files, it’s optional whether anything will load or not. Everything about Windows 11 is leaning into the worst aspects of windows 10, without any benefit.

If Microsoft really wants people to switch to Windows 11 they need to retain many of the already few remaining customization options from Windows 10. Trackpad gesture support is worse, the only useful button in the new right click menu is the show more one which brings back the old menu but requires an extra click, and the file explore somehow got even more buggy. I hate every time I need to interact with a computer using Windows 11.

Luckily there's been an initiative within my company recently to support Linux, so I'm hoping that all the network related issues are fully worked out before Windows 11 is forced on us so I can just jump ship to Ubuntu.

Windows: you'll eat this slop even if we have to carve a hole in your throat and force it through.

Wellp..... This morning I was ready to go to work and have a few meetings but thanks to windows 11 inconvenient update service now I can just come here to complain.

Join the dark side 🐧

lol

lmao even

Honestly, I don't get the hate of Windows 11. Sure, compatibility is a shitshow but if you can install it, it's better than W10. I updated a couple months back and was pleasantly surprised. Things I like:

• Improved tiling
• The new terminal app is actually usable.
• More consistent theming
• Settings menu is no longer useless
• Last two points combined result in me not getting flashbanged nearly as often as I did in W10
• Improved volume mixer. I even ditched EarTrumpet.
• Most people won't care about this one, but the little pop-ups that appear when you hover an icon in the system tray don't get stuck in your screen as much as they did in W10.

Things that got worse:

• The start menu. Seriously. Stop with the redesigns.
• Taskbar is no longer movable. I liked it on the left.
• They hid the right click menu under an additional "More options" menu for some reason

Disclaimer: I only use my Windows computer for playing games. I do all of my regular day to day computing on my laptop with Fedora (KDE spin because I'm not a godless heathen I like it better). I'm also running the Education version, which is basically Enterprise so I have feature updates straight up turned off and only get security updates. It also doesn't have any ads but my ROG Ally has W11 Home and it doesn't have any ads either, so I don't even know what's real anymore.

I think many people in here need to realise that most people don’t care about their OS, or Copilot or Recall or anything like that. I don’t know what the reason is for this but most people don’t change their OS.

I’m definitely not going to be forced to Windows 11. I’ll probably install Linux on my now three year old PC until it falls apart and I need a new one. Or I might just go back to Mac, which I used exclusively for 7 years in the 2010’s.

If Microsoft thinks they can intimidate or push me to 11, they’re sorely mistaken.

The only reason I'm still on windows is I run a weird 3 monitor setup on a Nvidia GPU.

Even then I could probably switch but I'm too lazy

Seriously, stop using Windows. If you set up a new computer, use Linux. Compared to everything we had in the 1990's when we all decided to buy a computer and connect to the internet, modern Linux is fucking awesome, so think of it like prestiging in Call of Duty. You go back to the 90's and start over, but it's not nearly as bad, and it's for a good cause.

Family need a new computer? Linux, Mac OS. Work need services deployed? Linux, FreeBSD.

Stop using Windows. Please. I stopped in 2013 and I've never been happier, it's not been easy but I'm better now because of it and when I have to see Windows I fucking cringe and wonder how people can do it.

Break your addiction to the GUI, it's not better than CLI, it augments it. Break your addiction to download and double click .exe to install applications. Break your addition video games that require Windows, you can run anything in Steam now (sans VR 😿). Break your addiction to your OS stopping you to apply "updates" and breaking your shit and blue screen frown face and moving your start windows logo button from the far left where it's been for decades to the middle and showing you ads and introducing spy features and forcing their browser on you and their search engine and promising you good changes and good software just to deploy a half-baked product and begging you to "just wait it'll get better", to have it die in your arms and have ms just walk up rip it out of your arms and replace it with more half-baked software and promises, over and over. Break your addiction to MS telling you this is the last OS that you will ever buy every fucking release, having features taken from you and placed behind a pay wall, having simple applications like notepad which might have been fine in 1993 but then just remain the same for literally 20 fucking years, just to be overhauled to have tabs, something that notepad++ (which is free) has had since the beginning. Break your addiction to the abuse, this company is buying nuclear power plants to run datacenters to process data about you, that they basically are forcing you to be okay with, so that they can further increase their profit margins, and or enable governments to survey the public for whatever reason they deem necessary.

I don't like all the changes in Windows 11, but by and large it's been fine for me.

Windows is only relevant because of a few key applications, like MS Office (no, libre office doesn't come close).

How do they judge? How do I look at market?

Announcing in 2025

Windows Buntu we bring the U in Windows ....... Actually that would be nice for Ubuntu to slowly suffocate and take over Windows lol

I've been apprehensive to all kinds of adverts for years, I guess the general population is catching up to me on this trend.

I really don't want to have to install it for work at all next year.

But has Netcraft confirmed it?

The 8 GB in my ThinkPad is pretty annoying. It's usable but not enjoyable.

Windows users will do everything, including using a soon unsupported and insecure, outdated version of this proprietary garbage, instead of just switching to a better OS