One Year Later: Windows 10 Now Runs On Over 21% of All Desktops (winbeta.org)

An anonymous reader writes: On June 29, Microsoft announced that Windows 10 was running on 350 million devices -- 50 million more devices than the previous milestone announced by Microsoft on May 5. While the company is expected to update the number of devices running the latest OS when it releases the Windows 10 Anniversary Update on August 2nd, NetMarketShare has decided to conduct some research on its own. According to its report, Windows 10 currently runs on a 21.13% desktop OS share. Meanwhile, Windows 7 continues to dominate the market with a 47.01% share, with Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 representing less than 10% of the PC market, and Windows XP representing 10.34%. While the market share of Windows 10 is all but certain to rise, it likely won't rise as fast as it did between May and June or June and July for example, as Windows 10 is no longer offered as a free upgrade for PCs running Windows 7 or Windows 8. Microsoft has even backtracked on its original statement that Windows 10 will hit one billion devices by mid-2018, saying last month that Windows 10 likely won't in fact make that deadline.

Comments

99% of those

[Anonymous Coward]

run it unwillingly.

Re:99% of those

[wonkey_monkey]

Jesus. Get a sense of humour.

Re:99% of those

[Anonymous Coward]

But most know what "getting work done" means, and installing Linux is simply not it. You're just wasting time trying to make an OS work when it should work out of the box (and say what you will but I have yet to meet the windows installation that does not) and the user community's reaction to the newcomer's legitimate question is more often than not unhelpful when not simply disdainful. FYI: people who are not nerds do not care about computers. We care about getting things done, and computers are just a means to an end. Simple as that. Your religion wars on software and operating system would be funny if they were not pathetic. People choose windows or MacOS because they work. Simple as that. We do not have hours or days to spend making linux or whatever do what we are interested in doing right now. We don't care about operating systems and the meaning of the word. We're not interested in learning the language of the socially inept. We have lives to live, unlike you.

Re: 99% of those

[geekmux]

As a first time user of linux Mint I had it installed, patched and up and running in 20 minutes On the first attempt. Everything I needed for productivity was already installed, including an open office suite. Compare that to a typical Windows install.

Thank you. I'm glad someone brought forth an example of Linux in the year 2016, as opposed to the argument the parent was attempting to make here by bringing up some flavor of 1995 Linux.

Re:99% of those

[RavenLrD20k]

Tool for the job, man.

You use Linux and you don't even know it. No, it's not powering your desktop, but UNIX/Linux is powering a very large portion of the internet. And if you bank on the internet, or manage insurance policies over the net, or take part in online investing, you're likely using IBM system/390 or z/OS mainframes to handle your transactions. I'm a professional .NET coder, which means at work I have to use various Microsoft provided tools for my job. At home, I only run a Windows machine for 2 reasons:

• 1) To be able to remote into my system at work using the VPN when I'm on-call.
• 2) For PC Gaming.

The rest of the time I'm using Linux, because it's what I know better and can do more work with it in less time.

People don't choose Windows or Mac because they're operating systems that work. People choose Windows or Mac because it's what they know, and the Devil you know is always better than the Angel you don't. If you were able to put the time and effort into learning the depths of administering a UNIX or UNIX-like OS you'd be able to tell quite quickly just how broken Windows really is, and similarly just how confining OS X can be. Again, I'm not saying you need to do this, because until you can get deep under the hood with a good concept of what you're doing, you're always going to be more productive with what you have worked with more since you know generally what you can expect out of it(again, the Devil you know vs. the Angel you don't).

You deride Linux for not "getting work done" when it's really just you don't want to spend the time to install it and use it (which is kinda sad considering that several mainline distributions are as difficult to install as clicking on a checkbox indicating your keyboard layout, selecting your time zone, and selecting from a list which productivity and development applications you want, and then clicking the install button and letting it go for 20 minutes with the final result being in a system that just works for your system; I've had to do a lot more than that on any Windows system I've installed). You're actually rather lucky that you have such "easy" operating systems to work with now to "get work done." When I first had a job where I worked with computers in order to "get work done" I had to write out JCL scripts to send to a Mainframe operator who manually scheduled my job to run, which amounted to taking a comma space delimited text file created by a data entry program and running an SQL insert statement against the entries to put them into the database (at that time I didn't know or care what DB system the office used). If I had started that job a year earlier (1995 instead of 1996) I would have been punching up that same JCL by hand on cards. Each card having one line of code that was at max 80 characters long. Compared to that, compiling and installing Linux from scratch was an absolute breeze. Granted most of the cards could be re-used as it was only 6 separate lines of the JCL that had to be changed for each job, but I'd hate to be the guy doing that punching. They used a single square hole punch for that purpose since that was cheaper and saved more space than paying for the punch machine that was basically a type writer that took up half of your average bathroom. After working there, compiling a complete Linux install from scratch was an absolute breeze.

Now get off my lawn and STFU about shit you don't know and refuse to understand, hipster shit-tard. (If you "have a life", WTF are you doing here?)

Re: 99% of those

[Anonymous Coward]

I just installed linux mint on my home PC and have spent 2 days (not entire days but maybe a few hours each day) troubleshooting various things to try to equal the responsiveness/performance/quality of my windows 7 pc. The main ones were: 1) Firefox behaved so fucking slowly it was like I was browsing back in the 90's and 2) Audio quality was absolute shit. These were not hard to fix but, FFS, why should I have to browse forums and change a bunch of settings to make things behave normally. It doesn't directly put me off that I had to do this but your average person can't or won't trouble shoot. Even if it takes 2x as long to set everything up - if it works WITHOUT THINKING then that is a win for most people.

I have used linux before but not as a home PC. To say that linux is equal to windows in terms of working right of the box - well that is false. For all Windows other faults, I have never had very basic usability issues with windows. There are some every nice things about linux but unfortunately they are clouded by other issues that have been handled by windows for years.

I wish Microsoft would disappear

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish Microsoft would just close up their shop and have other more trusted people make a popular operating system.

I am using Win 7, but I am not really happy with it.

It sort of feels like I don't own my own computer, and I don't like that. And to me anything Win 10 seems like the storefront for a police state.

Just a slight misunderstanding...

[hyades1]

"...Windows 10 is no longer offered as a free upgrade for PCs running Windows 7 or Windows 8."

I think what the author meant to say was, "Windows 10 is no longer rammed down the throat any user too naive to treat anything coming from Microsoft as a malware attack."

A year but still not ready?

[dbIII]

Wake me up when it's finished and usable instead of a total mess with two control panels and a requirement to search instead of navigate a menu.

4/5ths

[ledow]

"4/5ths of people refused a free upgrade to what was traditionally a very expensive piece of software, despite us trying to forcibly install it on their machines for months on end and making it difficult for anyone other than a techy to refuse it".

Amazing how you can change how something reads by just flipping it.

Windows 10 probably will be the last version

[sonamchauhan]

Windows 10 probably will be the last version of Windows, but not the way Microsoft imagines it.

By continuing to nag, snoop, spam and lock-down its users, Microsoft is transforming its core offering - its OS - into the opposite of what it should be: an agent of the owner that compels the computer to obey the owner's intent.

Its the age-old agency problem. An agent with a large amount of power (network effects in Microsoft's case) tends to abuse it to the detriment of the principal (Microsoft users). Its same problem when powerful executives persuade their company to reward them richly without commensurate effort. Left uncorrected, the situation worsens (customers quit in disgust, company implodes, etc).

Another company may eventually do to the Microsoft desktop what Apple and Android did to them in mobile. Or Microsoft may wisen up and curb their worst excesses (as they did in the XBox One phone-home fiasco). But it'd be a hard sell to the MS board and would take a lot of imagination on their part to act more directly in favor of consumers, versus short-term shareholder rewards.

Re:Correlates With Stat Counter

[drinkypoo]

They stopped the bleeding, but its not exactly the "threshold" that would return Windows to growth that Microsoft's upper management claimed it would be.

They haven't stopped the bleeding. The bleeding has intensified, and it will reach a state of crisis when Windows 7 goes EOL. This number of converts is an abject failure when you're giving away the product. Sad thing is, I've finally used Windows 10 for a few seconds and I think I'd really enjoy it if it weren't spyware.

80% Refuse To Use Win10 Even When It's Given Away

[Anonymous Coward]

80% refuse to use Windows 10 even when it is forcibly given away for free. That's the real story. Microsoft literally tried to force people to use the free upgrade to Windows 10 for a full year and 80% of the market avoided it.

• People don't see any need for Windows 10, they are satisfied and happy with what they have in Windows 7.
• People don't want Microsoft's vision of a desktop tablet. They've been signaling this to Microsoft since Windows 8.
• People don't want Microsoft's vision of an app store. That has worked well for Apple, but it hasn't worked as well monetarily for Google, and not at all for Microsoft.
• People don't want to pay rent to use "their" computer.
• People don't want their devices spying on them, even if they have tolerated it for phones and tablets.
• People don't want their computer operating system randomly changing under them with features coming and going without warning, interface elements being rearranged...
• Microsoft has failed to realize that despite their market dominance, people will not tolerate Microsoft dictating to them. The customer is taking back control.
• Microsoft will not be allowed to change the color scheme, raise the rent and lock in the users.

Nice try, bitches. Fuck you!

This message composed and posted from a Linux desktop PC.

Re:Runs?

[Stormwatch]

If you think that's not a speed demon, you have more money than common sense. My first-gen i5 with 8GB is "fairly modern". Hell, even a Core 2 Duo with 4GB is a solid general use machine (except for new games).

Re:20% is an insane failure

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

To be fair, quite a lot of the other 79% will be professionals. You wouldn't expect most large organisations to migrate to a new OS within a year of its release, and in the specific case of Windows 10, the Enterprise and Education variants seem to be very different products to Home and Pro, so big business and government might move later without the same concerns that the little people like us have.

I totally agree that the 21% figure is awful given the heavyhanded approach Microsoft have taken to pushing 10 on existing users and the fact that it's now the default OS preinstalled on most off-the-shelf consumer PCs, but we shouldn't overstate the case. It's damning enough already...

I'm loving my Win10 experience

[fedos]

It's a big improvement over Win7. I don't understand the hate.