According to Statcounter, Windows 11 held a 55.18% market share in October 2025. That share dropped to 53.7% in November and dropped again in December. Now, Windows 11 holds a 50.73% market share.
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/windows/desktop/worldwide
Many are rollback to Windows 10, but Linux is increasing as well.
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide
Just switched to Linux. Convinced sis in law to try linux as she was having driver issues. Wife is about to try it on our laptop. Linux has reached a point of, it just works. It can play windows games better than windows, so no reason not to.
How hard is it for laymen people to install and use it? Are there step by step instruction available?
I’ve had a techy mate have issues installing mint, but I had no issues and have dailied it as an OS only reverting to windows in extreme cases.
If you’re not dual booting it’s simple as. My friend has had issues dual booting on the same drive, whereas I went one drive per OS and butter smooth. Nice to be able to recover one drive from another without external tools.
Pretty straightforward actually, plenty of distros even ship their own USB flasher tool so that you don’t have to use rufus.
Definitely step by step instructions available and even official videos now.
Getting a modern motherboard to boot to a USB key is still a royal pain in the ass.
Pro tip: if you have the luxury of a spare hard drive, use it. Pull the old windows drive out entirely and set it aside to pull backups from later. Various “security features” that work to “protect” your Windows install behave better once the Windows drive is completely removed.
Once the Linux live USB is up, just click install and then “next” a bunch of times.
Are there step by step instruction available?
You may very well need specific instructions to convince your motherboard to boot to the Linux live USB media.
Although, if you replace the Windows harddrive with a blank harddrive, many motherboards will then do the right thing and boot to the Linux live USB key.
(Warning: Get your files off the Windows drive first. The windows drive is probably encrypted, and so won’t be useful for recovering files later.)
Getting booted into the Linux live media is by far the hardest part.
Once you’re booted into the Linux Mint Live USB key, make sure Linux Mint detected and is able to get on the Internet. You’ll need your wifi password.
Once you’re happy with that, click “Install Linux Mint” and just follow the prompts. The hardest question for me was remembering what my time zone is.
Linux Mint will tell you when to reboot, and will even remind you to remove the Live Media USB key.
Reboot and enjoy Linux.
Yep most BIOSes will have a toggle for Secure Boot. Make off.
This is the official Linux Mint installation guide: https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/
Which distro would you recommend for gaming? I usually hear people like Mint for that.
Bazzite has been excellent on my older AM4 desktop with mid range AMD card. Steam came ready to roll and performance was so close to Win 10 LTSC, that I have yet to try a different distro.
I can’t recommend Bazzite. You can’t install new drivers if something doesn’t work right out of the box and that is just a complete no go for many people.
I hear ya. Its definitely not for everyone. If you are into tweaking your system, Bazzite isn’t for you. But I took the plunge, installed the apps and games I need, and its been running great the last few months. Just my 2 cents. YMMV.
Yes, Bazzite adds complexity due to its immutable nature.
But then again, if you have driver issues on Linux (which has become reasonably rare these days), they’re hard to resolve either way, particularly as a beginner.
Mint is good for gaming and simple for most people but there are other distros which run newer versions of software or/and has more access to software. I generally use distros based on arch, such as EndeavourOS with the caveat that they sometimes break.
Bazzite or CachyOS (Bazzite for ease, CachyOS for performance).
I play old games and interestingly had better FPS with default Mint than default Bazzite. Old like the last golden age 90s 2000s.
I been switching everyone to Linux, specifically Mint. It’s good enough now for whatever.
Mint? Based on Ubuntu 22.04? Seems a hint dated.
No offense, I swear. But I have a buddy who has to support Mint installs for work and it honestly sounds horrible.
Then again, the ease of use is probably worth the time saved setting up Arch.
Even if it wasn’t an LTS thing, ‘dated’ means nothing to Linux. Stability but with security fixes is the real win. There’s a hell of a lot of room in the Windows install-base for “needs an os that’s not spying on them, but realistically just uses a web browser.”
Dated means a fuckton in the Desktop world. Browsers get updates regularly, so do games and graphics drivers. There’s nothing “stable” about a website not working correctly just because my browser version is ancient and coming from the official repo.
Thank god flatpak has made people see the light, at least a little bit.
When a distro is ‘dated’ and get’s ‘stale’ updates, it’s not like the browsers don’t get regular updates. They’re just dragging their feet on kernel revisions and DMs, testing more and moving more slowly, gaining stability. Latest Firefox is still on Debian.
buddy who has to support Mint installs for work
The “work” part is probably why you have such a bad view of Mint. It could be any OS, but at work there would be a horror story every day (because theres a lot of people, most cant use computers, etc).
The ease of use and not having it break randomly is why you don’t use Arch for normal people who just need to get stuff done.
Actually I want to delete my comment… 22.04 is actually Pop!_OS not Mint. So I’m really dumb there, admittedly, Ubuntu spinoffs get me a little mixed up.
And the work bit, in truth, I think he could fix it by using a btrfs partition, snapper, and grub-btrfs. Build the machine to automatically take snapshots so if someone breaks it, you can fix it faster.
And yeah, ease of use is important, that was not meant as a criticism instead I pointed out a logical reason why Mint made sense.
Long story short, comment stupid, my bad.
Mint has snapshots available out of the box even with ext4, the welcome screen prompts you to create a snapshot to fallback to if anything goes wrong.
Interesting, I would love to understand the tooling behind that.
It depends on what you’re doing. I’ve got Mint on my laptop and main PC, and the experience is different on both. On the laptop I tend to play Minecraft and do some basic tasks like taking notes and browsing the web. There’s nothing in Mint that really affects that, so it doesn’t hold me back at all.
On the PC though, I’ve got all of my important software, and some of it has had to be installed manually because the Mint repos are outdated. It’s nothing that’s particularly difficult to fix, but I know my way around computers. For your average user, it would be too much.
There are many stops between mint and arch. I’d personally point a new user towards fedora or maybe another Debian distro
Honestly, I’m with you on that one. Debian is reliable, so it send like the safest option. Personally, I use it for my seed box, and I’ve helped others set their own up to. Fedora, on the other hand, introduces package updates a little more frequently and in the long run, I think it’s more enjoyable to work on in a desktop environment.
Mint is based on 24.04, and will rebase on the next LTS when it’s released.
Alternatively, Linux Mint Debian Edition is based on Debian 13, which is currently newer than 24.04. Good option for non-nvidia users.
Straight up, I got it confused with Pop!_OS. Although I’m too lazy to look it up, my buddy who has been using it for years mentioned looking at other options because of that reason.
And this is the reason Linux will never go mainstream.
Even the Linux community can’t agree which distro is good enough for the general public.
I simply didn’t see it that way. Sure, the Linux community doesn’t necessarily agree on which version is the best for new users. But we tend to agree on reliable distros which are good to get started on.
Brand New user? Unless they have a specific task that the PC needs to do, then first priority is reliability. Off the top of my head, Debian is reliable as hell, Ubuntu is about the same and fine but not my preference (very dislike snap proprietary bs that almost no one uses anyways), Fedora is a common use case and while I haven’t used their desktop in a while, I rather like the rhel based distros they are reliable but keep things a little newer than say Debian.
The point is that I disagree with you entirely. You see the choice of distributions as daunting and a scary thing. I don’t. I see the choice as freeing.
It has never mattered to me personally what version of Linux someone is using, or what path they think I should go down, I do my own research for my own purposes and come back with my own options(maybe my 90s rebel inner child still exists). Admittedly, perhaps someone needs more guidance when running away from Microslop and I could help as long as I know what package manager the distro is using.
Now, you also say that Linux isn’t mainstream already? There are entire career fields built on it, why the hell is it not considered mainstream. DevOps typically uses Linux heavily, might be as simple as an install script, or a full k8s deployment. And shoot running docker servers for backing up your files via VPN? What about 25 TB of jellyfin movies/shows. Sorry, but even if not used as a desktop, a Linux server can go a long way and do a ton of good.
I switched my parents to Linux more than 10 years ago. They are very happy with it.
What generation are they?
Convicted monopoly.
I won’t update my perfectly usable computer just because microslop refuses to support it.
Please be careful when using Windows 10, because any security vulnerabilities envolving Windows itself will not be fixed, and your computer will be more vulnerable to attacks. I’m not saying this to scare you off, but to advise you to take extra precaution and to remind you that most computer security experts do not recommend using and connecting to the Internet systems that will get no further security updates. I’m no expert myself, but I’m pretty sure that things like making sure you web browser is always updated, being careful with the programs you choose to download, and using updated antivirus software are the most common tips for this kind of situation. You might want to do more your research on this topic yourself if you haven’t yet. Stay safe!
The thing is, (as you already know but this is for people that have not yet taking the plunge), Linux today is so unbelievable good. It’s both snappy and good looking. A 5 year old computer feels like new. There might be a little tinkering, but you know that might be a quite fun experience and your computer feels like new again.
I run Debian for my tv PC, steam link with bt controller - shit just works and it’s so fast.
I’ve been dailying linux since 2010 and it’s gotten way easier. stuff that didn’t work just does now. remember printer and wi-fi driver hell? now it works worse on windows if anything. games and some proprietary software are the only anchors, and that’s kinda going away slowly
I still can’t convince my dad to just switch, but at this point running Windows is in nearly every single way worse than just running a popular Linux distro.
Statcounter data has a lot of shortterm noise. Longterm trends are meaningful, but do not get too excited about short term fluctuations.
At the same time Windows has been slowly losing market share over the years.
Linux Mint for desktop. Bazzite for handheld.
Bye Microsoft
That’s a surprisingly large increase, wow. I switched back in 2017 and I’ve been using it ever since, but that’s good to see other people are making the switch too.
The only thing stopping me from moving from Win10 to a new rig on Linux Mint is ram prices.
Just install Linux on the old rig.
Honestly, given that Mint is a Debian distro (before anyone yells at me, its an Ubuntu distro that itself is a Debian distro) it will work better out of the box on less up to date hardware. Debian prioritizes stability so it’s repos and drivers are months to years old. Older hardware will have stable working drivers meanwhile new hardware may have to work with experimental or generic drivers.
That seems so strange. Why would that happen so late?
I’ve been dual-booting for years. Made a big push to get the software I typically use on Windows to run on Ubuntu. Haven’t touched Windows in about a month and it’s wonderful. Haven’t got gaming nailed down yet, going to try Bazzite on my desktop. Some of my more graphics-intensive games don’t run well on Ubuntu. Pretty sure my desktop is compatible with Windows 11, I’ll upgrade at some point but I still plan to only use it when it’s necessary. Unfortunately it is necessary for me sometimes. I’ll probably start making preparations soon switch to Win 11 and be prepared for that to fuck my Ubuntu partition, so that’s probably when I’ll install Bazzite as well. My old Lenovo tank is already Linux-only.
It’s sad to say while it was the default choice for a while, it seems like a lot of people are avoiding Ubuntu now.
Gaming is awesome on CachyOS; it’s very possible much of the better capabilities there can be installed on Ubuntu, but I don’t know how hard that is. I imagine most games would perform similarly by default.
I’m sure it has nothing to do with forcefeeding AI or copying the user’s screen content.
copying the user’s screen content
Can’t imagine why anyone would be upset about that!
Swapped to Linux Mint over the weekend. No major issues. Steam works, LLMs work, web browser stuff all transferred over…it wasn’t perfect but pretty easy to figure it out with a few online searches. The best part - it actually runs better. No more f*cked up bluetooth and audio as well.
A lot of customization can be done on it, but I think for most people, Linux is fine for the vast majority of users already out of the box. Some criticism is that I think the UX can be improved and a more layman-friendly streamlined partition mounting + file security management.
Same for my partner’s old gaming PC: she used Windows 10 until recently, and Bluetooth as well as the steam overlay didn’t work properly.
Now on Bazzite they do.
It sounds like Bazzite is the most “plug and play” version at the moment, is that right?
I’ve heard lovely things about Bazzite with Steam.
However I have only run Steam on Ubuntu and Linux Mint, where it ran flawlessly.
I think the Linux Mint workflow of “click on software center”, “search for steam”, “click install” - is hard to beat.
Well, Bazzite has it pre-installed, but that’s the experience for other stuff lol.
I don’t recommend mint for newbies because it comes with X11 even still.
Bazzite has closed source software preinstalled? Yikes
Probably more like it automatically installs is when you install the system but yeah.
This isn’t Debian. It has a live image that comes with Nvidia drivers so you can have these from the start too.
I need to try mint
Ehh, I’ve had a few problems with it, from the installation wizard crashing, to my wifi drivers disabling on system resume, to it completely freezing when I switch language input, to sometimes crashing when I load a web page. I’d try a different distro than risk the instability.
E: And before someone chimes in saying it’s my laptop, I will say I had none of these problems using Windows, other than it was very slow.
It’s your laptop.
Hah, but no seriously. It’s just always kind of a shot in the dark which distro is the best for your computer. Mint has been best for my laptop, but really did not get it even installing on the desktop. Manjaro or Tumbleweed worked on it.
I think sometimes there are hits and misses when installing a distro. Could not get Mint to boot after installing it so I ended up installing Debian - where Mint should be easier to get going, Debian installed perfectly fine for me.
Oh, definitely! I got my eyes on PopOS but I have a feeling I’ll need an afternoon to do it
Sometimes the pain is worth the gain :D Just not so many free afternoons for me in the next while, otherwise I would be trying Arch … but for now I will be using set it and forget it Debian.
I imagine this is why MS is finally backtracking a bit on the aggressive pushing of AI in every app. They’re doing Clippy all over again, but OS-wide this time.
Just impressive how hard they managed to screw the pooch here. Have they forgotten that every other Windows release is universally hated? They had a good thing going until they discontinued Windows 10 before Windows 12 was out. Now they’ll probably need to rush out another version, because the name Windows 11 is forever tainted.
It’s not just AI, W11 is slow and unfriendly in general
Yep. Everything that runs in windows 10 runs worse on Windows 11 and y are getting nothing in return. My work PC can barely manage a big spreadsheet now.
I use VMs to program industrial PLCs and I find it outrageous that performance today is worse than what it was 10 years ago with the same software
Yeah, for a while I was looking for any benefits to moving from win 10 to 11. 7 to 10 had kernel and scheduler improvements, for example.
Only ones I could find were the virtual desktop support (though I had an alternative desktop back in the XP or Vista days that supported that, so not really groundbreaking), and WSL, which I didn’t have any use cases for.
Other than that, it was just shit I didn’t want. Copilot, recall, more UI changes that don’t really add anything (on my work laptop where I didn’t have a choice, first thing I did was go into the UI options and undo as much as I could). One of the things I used to like about windows was that it wasn’t a mac, but the UI changes look like that’s their inspiration. The inspired folks porbably all left already.
Only ones I could find were the virtual desktop support (though I had an alternative desktop back in the XP or Vista days that supported that, so not really groundbreaking), and WSL, which I didn’t have any use cases for.
Wait, what do you mean? 10 had virtual desktops and WSL (LSW!) too
So yeah, they built a new product and tried to force everyone to use it, when it had no improvements for the users whatsoever. And surprise, no one is excited to use it.
Do you have a source for that backtracking about AI? I think they did not mention that explicitly. Instead they were talking about unrelated improvements. The CEO is still in denial about AI bloat. He seems unable to comprehend that people don’t like to be force fed AI everywhere across the OS.
They’re not in denial. They know no one wants it. They all do. They just don’t care because pretending like they do is extremely profitable in the fucked up modern economy we live in.
I think that Satya Nadella and a lot of other CEO types genuinely believe in AI, as misguided as it seems. This is more about who they choose to listen too than having an actual understanding of the technology and its limits. And probably some FOMO sprinkled on top.
Sam Altman knows what’s up though and so does Jensen Huang. In this gold rush one is peddling the fake gold and the other is selling the shovels.
Agree to disagree, I suppose. I believe the Anthropic guy because he’s actually quite nuts about it. Nvidia is the only company that’s actually going to make money here, selling shovels, as you said.
Yeah the Antrophic guys are also firmly in the “believer” group.
https://pureinfotech.com/microsoft-windows-11-ai-brakes-copilot-recall/
Note that this article completely buries the lede. This is the last paragraph:
#Enterprise pushback is also influencing decisions#
Separately, enterprise users have pushed back against Copilot in managed environments, prompting the software giant to test options that would allow IT admins to uninstall Copilot more easily on business devices. This indicates that the rethink isn’t just about consumer sentiment but also addresses corporate deployment challenges.
The reason they’re having second thoughts is due to enterprise customers, who are the only customers they really care about the opinion of. If it was just home users complaining, they would not be adjusting course.
Windows 11.1 anyone? lol
Windows 11.1.1 for desktops?
The thing that’s driving me away from windows is how pushy it’s gotten. Forced updates, ads, AI, OneDrive, and subscriptions. I just want to be able to turn on MY computer and do what I want or need without having my guard up that I can’t trust my home PC with my privacy.
Every forced update is 5 minutes of hassle for each login. If you work from multiple PCs, it’s a nightmare.
Win10 LTSC IOT has support until like 2032, and doesn’t have any of that pushy bullshit. It’s free to pirate btw.
This is the way
Eh, if you’re not able to make the jump to linux ig.
Derrr
Lemmy tells me it’s more user friendly than ever.
+1. I ragequit windows when it reinstalled Teams during an OS update, just after i uninstalled it.
I discovered that there’s a separate application which just reinstalls Teams all the time. I don’t remember the name, but it had Teams in the name. After I uninstalled that it finally stopped popping up.
Apparently:
This behavior is usually caused by two things:
- A background installer from Microsoft Office called the Teams Machine-Wide Installer, which automatically reinstalls Teams for each user.
- Windows 11’s built-in Chat feature, which is powered by Teams and may reinstall the app during updates or restarts.
It’s called something like Teams System-Wide Installer, at least it used to be. Who knows, now. It is now a hidden app that won’t show under programs and features. I had to figure that shit out at work cause originally it only installed per user and my work wanted our users to start using it and make sure they didn’t need to go looking for it. Once it got bundled with the Office install I no longer had to care!
I finally kicked Windows after 30 years because I have to use windows 11 for work, and it fails at almost everything an operating system should be. Search doesn’t work right. Applications don’t work right. Basic UI is buggy and inconsistent. It’s the most expensive piece of software I use. Using 2 cores and 7GB of RAM at idle is unacceptable for an operating system. It’s the equivalent of running Skyrim all the time in the background. It actively tries to undermine my privacy, and instead of using that data to enhance my UX, it spams targeted ads at me in my fucking taskbar. Windows 11 is basically a SmartTV in terms of privacy and functionality at this point. It actively gets in the way of you using the hardware, and to no tangible benefit. Worse, it’s become clear that Microsoft recognizes this, and is actively pursuing and expanding the capabilities, with no intent to make a good OS in the future.
I’m out.
That sounds frustrating. What have you switched to?
I’ve only worked one place with Linux desktops, I miss it.
My personal desktop is on mint. I just got an old 56 core, 256GB RAM, 18TB server from work. I’m running proxmox on that so I can spin up VMs with different distros on it to try them out.
That’s probably my main issue with Windows : Its ability to change settings on its own.
I feel like I have almost not control over my OS. It’s not a tool that helps me do stuff, it’s a dumb assistant that thinks he understands what I’m trying to achieve.
“Oh you plugged a PS5 Dual Sense controller I see, let me switch your microphone to the controller even though you are actively already using another one”.
“Oh you put your computer in sleep before going to bed? Let me switch it on In the middle of the night to update, we will call that a mandatory maintenance because you can’t disable that feature”.
I really need to spend more time on my Linux boot rather than this shitty W10 setup".
The reason why Windows is pushy is because the average user needs it to be.
Updates would never get installed, unless Microsoft forces them to.
They would lose their files, unless Microsoft pushes OneDrive.
And all of them would blame Microsoft for their own ineptitude.
It is easy for techy people to keep their computer functioning properly. But Windows isn’t just used by those people.
I’ll agree on the update thing, but absolutely NOT on any of the other parts. Things like OneDrive are ENTIRELY about money.
With the update thing, even “pros” were incredibly lazy with updates in the past. Having automatic updates at least as the default is entirely correct.
I like that Linux isn’t designed for the lowest common denominator. Windows frustrated me as much with the stuff that was designed for the stupid as the stuff that was designed to make them money, just the second one ended up dominating in the end. But I remember the earlier frustrations often having the thought “I bet they just changed this to reduce support calls from people who don’t know wtf they are doing”.
I would say that it’s as simple as adding a prompt during initial user setup with check boxes. Would you like windows to handle XYZ for you? Instead of assuming all users just want to use their computers to become influencers and forcing frustrating problems onto everyone.
It may have started out with “hey we are doing this for your own good” to now it’s “how can we exploit ignorance and data mine our users and put ads on the desktop?”
There are alternatives, you can see the alternatives on display in various Linux distros, and hell, even Mac OS. The thing is that with Windows Microsoft doesn’t want you to think of an alternative.
It’s simply not true that the only way to do computing is to force everyone to use your trashy software or be nagged about it during every upgrade.
They are only doing this because they have the average user by the balls. Hopefully, Linux continues to get better and then that won’t be the case anymore either.
Windows update are starting to feel like updates to Pixel phones: what horrible shit is coming next?
They thought they were too ingrained in everything for people to leave so they could start enshitfying and everyone would just have to deal with it. They knew they would lose some market share by doing so but are gambling on the increased profits from targeted ads and AI training data would make up for it.
It’s also likely that for a single glorious quarter stockholder value was slightly increased, therefore it was a complete success.
I think it’s more that they’re not really making money on Windows anymore. The money is in cloud services like Office 365. So Windows is just being used to push people towards what actually makes Microsoft money, disregarding whether they actually want those services.
The first time I heard the “every other” theory I was sceptical but it has held true for a very long time now.
They might do an 8.1 and mess with some features (remember when they had to bring back the tool bar)? But another release is likely needed to fix some of the Win 11 performance and bloat issues now.
They’ve cut too deep, for some good reasons, but at the cost of making everything slow.
^ Note I haven’t even talked about AI here.
It isn’t even just the performance and bloat issues or the AI.
As you hinted, Windows 11 made a lot of changes to the UI. I can’t think of a single change made which I liked as someone who has had to deal with Windows since before 95. Windows 11 felt like a downgrade from Windows 10.
You’ve got a lot of managers with purchasing authority who developed a ton of muscle memory on old Windows. The new UI changes have made Windows feel alien enough that you can’t use retraining costs as an excuse to keep with Windows.
Windows 11 UI is a downgrade from XP.
Windows 11 is also deeply unstable. I haven’t had this many program crashes, errors, and other bullshit since Vista and ME. Windows 10 had it’s annoying quirks but it was at least relatively stable.
I have saved myself the headaches with UI changes since the Win8 clusterfuck when installed a 3rd party taskbar/menu.
I liked Clippy. I hate AI
📎I see you are nostalgic for your youth and how programs were tools and not spyware to track and target you. Maybe I can help with that 👮♀️👮♀️👮🏽👮🏽🚓🚓🚁🚁
They’re approaching the trust thermocline, where the pain of leaving is smaller than the pain of staying.
