Windows seemingly lost 400 million users in the past three years — official Microsoft statements show hints of a shrinking user base

Comments

• chiliedogg@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Everyone talking about how it’s because of Windows 11 or their greed driving people away, etc. But they’re ignoring the big one:

  People don’t need as many computers these days. You don’t have a lot of households with a laptop for every member of the family because smartphones and tablets have replaced the PC for many people for media consumption and basic tasks.

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  • paraphrand@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I keep having to remind people around me that phones are the primary computing device for an ever increasing percentage of the population.

    Lemmy wants to rail on Windows 11 AND they talk shit about your average person not understanding filesystems.

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    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

      Lemmy wants to rail on Windows 11 AND they talk shit about your average person not understanding filesystems.

      At some point, it just becomes exhausting to hear people explain-o-brag about their ability to navigate the command-line, like typing “dir” into a cursor field makes them the hottest thing since Alan Turing.

      Millennials will tell you they are tech geniuses, then throw up their hands when their dishwasher breaks or their check-oil light comes on.

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  • OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I think you’re right on this. People aren’t moving away from MS because of their obnoxious behaviour. They’re moving to alternate form factors and dealing with Apple’s and Google’s obnoxious behaviour instead. People are willing to put with a metric ton of bullshit so they don’t have to actually do anything for themselves.

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    • JcbAzPx@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I don’t think their obnoxious behavior is completely unrelated. After all, people aren’t choosing windows phones or tablets either.

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    • blarghly@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Correct. Whenever you see a large chunk of the population making a change, first assume it is for mundane reasons like finances or convenience.

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  • trd@feddit.nu ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Looks around my living room, 3 laptops, stationary, 1 nas and a server. 2 laptops are still running windows.

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    • paraphrand@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      You are an outlier.

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• cantstopthesignal@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  The search function has never been the same since vista. I’m not doing a web search from the search bar. I am specifically searching for files on my computer. F-off. And now I’m constantly asked to save to some cloud I don’t give a shit about.

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  • HugeNerd@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    You sound grumpy. You probably think computers are supposed to solve real problems too I bet… ha ha ha l o l

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    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

      You probably think computers are supposed to solve real problems

      It’s crazy to see how much of our society hinges on having access to the internet.

      Paying bills, applying for jobs, registering for any kind of public or private service, long distance travel or communication… A technology that was supposed to make life quicker and easier has become this firehose of annoying digital chores, scams, and red tape.

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• Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

  What a well earned drop. They keep forcing their bullshit on us, of course we’re interested in other OS’s as a result.

  I do use windows for most things, but my servers will never run anything but Linux at this point.

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• skisnow@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  We’re in the process of moving to Linux in our company, entirely because of how aggressively awful Windows 11 is. We’d have been perfectly happy staying on Windows 10 forever, but last week our head of development woke up to discover that Windows 10 had spontaneously chosen to “upgrade” itself during the night without him agreeing to it.

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  • nossaquesapao@lemmy.eco.br ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Wish you success in the migration

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• Sillyglow@lemmy.ca ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Forcing people to buy a new computer for nothing more than a security chip on the motherboard will do that

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  • NotANumber@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    They also had pretty strict CPU requirements. Mostly only 8th gen and newer, or a ryzen, would be required.

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• Suavevillain@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Just pure greed and giving users less and less control of an OS will push people away. It did for me outside of work. I don’t have any reason to touch Windows that often.

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  • blarghly@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    It’s because most people use their phones as their main computing device these days. The idea that the average person would give up the convenience, stability, and familiarity of something like windows because of “pure greed” and “loss of OS control” is a fantasy. The average person would buy a screwdriver with banner ads if it saved them $10.

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    • Bytemeister@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      This.

      Longtime computer “nerd” here. 8 years ago I wouldn’t have balked about spending more on a cellphone than my gaming PC, but I end up using my phone more hours per day than my desktop so I bit the bullet and bought a nice phone. Now my PC is basically a dedicated entertainment device, and my phone is my go-to for email, chat, music, videos, reading, documents, and even some work.

      If I wasn’t an avid gamer, I probably wouldn’t have a desktop or laptop at all right now.

      And I will be switching to Linux this year, mainly because of Windows 11 and the general direction the Microsoft is going. I’ve got a laptop to test with and when I have the hang of it, the big battle station is getting switched too.

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• WhyYesZoidberg@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Enshittification Will do that, yep

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• umbrella@lemmy.ml ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  good. fuck. microsoft.

  they had the choice of not being fucking awful and they had no reason to. im glad its crumbling for them even if wayyy too late.

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  • racketlauncher831@lemmy.ml ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    They would have way higher ratio of supporters if they stayed at XP or 7, and just keep security patching it but no, they deliberately sabotaged their star product with Vista, 8, 10, and 11. They deserved it.

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    • umbrella@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      id appreciate it if they didnt get it chock full of fucking ads. big part of why i left it.

      its actually a good system underneath the crud, and microsoft loves to insist on the crud.

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• lupusblackfur@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  If this calculation proves true, one would think losing close to 1/3 of its customers would cause M$ to rethink some of its business policies/plans…

  Such as forcing folks to retire perfectly good hardware and buy new if they wish to run Windoze11.

  But then again, it’s M$… 🤷‍♂️ 🤦‍♂️

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  • FlexibleToast@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    1/3 of its Windows customers, not of all of its customers. I bet they still make plenty of money with Azure and Office 365.

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    • henfredemars@infosec.pub ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Precisely. Windows is a side project for Microsoft now.

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  • finitebanjo@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    For some reason modern business degree holders don’t even consider the possibility of increasing head coubts but instead maximising gains from remaining heads.

    Same with employees, they see things like dirty stores and long lines and they try to force employees to work as sanitation crews and implement time limits to make lines faster long before they ever hire somebody new.

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  • Godort@lemmy.ca ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    This will rely on having an executive team that can predict trends beyond the next quarter.

    Doubling down on advertising, telemetry in an overly bloated OS looks really good if you only care about the profits that brings for the next 3 months, rather than how much your userbase resents it. MS is fully capable of turning this around immediately by just making LTSC available to the public without needing to by a MAK through an enterprise channel, but that means throwing away some recurring revenue in favor of claiming a lost userbase

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  • Guidy@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    And adding advertising to various parts of the OS.

    Hey, Microsoft: de-shitify your OS if you want it to be more popular.

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  • reddig33@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    It’s Microsoft current CEO. All they are interested in is subscription revenue. Xbox hardware is next to go.

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  • audaxdreik@pawb.social ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    You would hope, but this is the same thing we see across almost all industries these days. It’s almost like there’s a root cause for it, some sort of, Iunno, economic system we could blame …

    But especially cable companies, for example. Has a dwindling customer base caused them to rethink their business strategies? Or has it caused them to try and bleed that dwindling base dryer even faster?

    There’s no “learning” anymore, there’s riding the bus to the absolute pits of hell and just hoping you’re not the CEO to be the one that has to go down with it.

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• JoeDyrt@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I began using Windows in 1992. I switched to MacOS this year and I’m never going back.

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  • Lulzagna@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

    As someone who has had to use Windows, OSX and Linux as a daily driver at different points, OSX was by far the most challenging to work with. Every few months something broke. Fully on Linux now.

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• sibachian@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  windows dying doesn’t help. they are on a shopping spree buying every AAA game that tencent haven’t already bought.

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• secretlyaddictedtolinux2@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Hey, I have an idea that will help Microsoft:

  why not add even more AI that logs everything and then reports it to the government through additional telemetry?

  then they could even require the next edition to include a dedicated advertising GPU to take those logs and create tailored ads on the wallpaper as well as occasionally parse the logs and generated summaries for safety purposes!

  that will bring the customers back and boost short-term profits too!

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  • Pirate@feddit.org ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    You mother fucker… You’re hired!

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  • Mhad1@lemmy.zip ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Yeah, that wouldn’t really do anything, google just announced it for gemini and I don’t really see a push back against it, meta wants to compromise the copy right of all creators on its platform and it too was allowed, sadly right now in the name of AI advancement every kind of privacy will be compromised

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  • Nelots@lemmy.zip ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Sad thing is I guarantee they’d keep a majority market share after doing this. Few people would even be aware, and fewer still actually give a shit about their privacy. As for ads on the desktop, that might push people away… but then again, I had to practically force uBlock Origin down my friends’ throat after finding that they’ve had ads on YouTube for years and didn’t really care.

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    • Pirate@feddit.org ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      but then again, I had to practically force uBlock Origin down my friends’ throat after finding that they’ve had ads on YouTube for years and didn’t really care.

      This is insane to me. How people can use the internet with ads is just beyond me.

      And you wanna know the full hypocrisy? Google Chrome also comes with an Ad blocker, on by default. They block ads they don’t deem good, but allow all ads from AdSense, of course.

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• herseycokguzelolacak@lemmy.ml ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  This aligns with statcounter data here: gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/…/worldwide/#m…

  Windows market share on desktop has been slowly but steadily declining. From 95+% in 2009, to almost 70% today. In the same time period Linux went up from 0.6% to 4%, which is not bad.

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  • thebestaquaman@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    It can also be noted that the trend over time for the “unknown” category (which stands for 8 % today) follows the same trend as Linux. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that Linux is over-represented in the “unknown” category, and may actually be closer to 5-7 %.

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  • bent@feddit.dk ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Apparently Linux have 20% market share in Norway. That is… I don’t really believe it, but really cool if true.

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  • Gladaed@feddit.org ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    So this is just an apple victory or is Android to blame?

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    • 0x0@lemmy.zip ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Kids mostly use mobile devices and don’t even know what a folder is, so both.

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    • herseycokguzelolacak@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Android is not on this plot, it’s desktop only.

      The 2nd place is interestingly not Apple, but Unknown.

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  • lemming741@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Three points four percentage points. Not great. Not terrible.

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    • markko@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      It sounds much better when you say 1 in 167 people then vs 1 in 25 people today.

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    • herseycokguzelolacak@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      It was unthinkable 10 years ago. I call it a win.

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  • thmnwlf@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Apple Silicon goes absolutely BRRRR

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• Simulation6@sopuli.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Just want to say, Google Docs is NOT free. Just because you don’t send them money doesn’t mean you aren’t paying.

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  • hietsu@sopuli.xyz ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    What is free though is LibreOffice, or some Nextcloud document addons (to a degree) if ”cloud” is the thing.

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• DetectiveNo64@lemmy.ca ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I’ll be joining soon enough, going to dual boot with Linux. Only keeping windows for games that won’t work on Linux.

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• Octavio@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I haven’t had windows for 5 or 6 years when I switched to Mac. But earlier this year I bought a cheap Windows 11 machine because Windows was required for a contract I thought I was going to get (but didn’t). I was going to return it but thought meh it might be nice to have a personal laptop I can play around with. But I was unimpressed with Windows 11 so much that it mostly gathers dust now.

  I’m thinking this is the perfect opportunity to take the plunge into Linux. Has anyone on here used Linux and have any advice?

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  • bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    As everyone here will say. Go with linux mint. Haven’t used windows in months now and when I do need to its generally way more of a pain to do anything. Plus. Ms wants to shove their shitty ai in my face at all times (so they can recoup the billions they’ve most pouring into a buzzword). So I refuse to use it.

    You will need to have a learning curve with linux. Is basically a German car:" oh wow, this is so genius I love how this was designed! "And then “why the hell do i need a custom 12 pt socket to get this one bolt and why is it completely inaccessbile just to change a brake rotor”

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  • kaiserZak@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    We all use Linux here brother 😄 but to be fair, it’s not that complicated. Find yourself some simple tutorial on webpage on other device and just follow step by step and everything should be okay :) At least for me was, when I was first moving to Linux 😄 get yourself some good beginner distro like Ubuntu or Fedora and you are good to go :) good luck on your journey brother 🫡

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  • NotANumber@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Yes. Though it depends on what you want. If you are willing to learn some stuff, and don’t mind doing some maintenance, then CachyOS is hard to beat. Otherwise Linux Mint, PopOS, Aurora, and OpenSUSE are all good options. I wouldn’t recommend using Ubuntu directly anymore because of the enshitification canonical have engaged in. Debian is always good, but might not be what you are looking for in terms of ease of use or being up to date.

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  • 3dcadmin@lemmy.relayeasy.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Try a few distros they all pretty much have strengths and weaknesses. Run Linux boxes here for servers and other tasks and a mix of uses

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• NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  My new laptop came with Windows 11, but that’s gone now.

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  • squaresinger@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    M series chips on macbooks are likely helping more.

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    • Buffalox@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      The article says Mac sales are declining too.
      Apparently most of the decline is people that are simply ditching their PC because they don’t need it anymore.

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• Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  It sounds like a mixture of Chromebooks, and people simply not owning a traditional computer.

  Either way, it seems to be mostly Google that’s winning here.

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  • cygnus@lemmy.ca ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    These 2023 stats have Chromebook sales at only ~25M units globally, so this is probably the second scenarion, people decommissioning Windows computers and using the phone and/or tablet instead. canalys.com/…/global-tablet-market-share-Q2-2023

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    • Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      For most people, a tablet is a direct replacement for a laptop anyway, especially with a wireless keyboard. I run software for work that, as far as I know, is Windows only, but most people will be fine with a tablet, or even just a phone.

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  • bytesonbike@discuss.online ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Chromebooks went from “What is that?” To literally everywhere in schools.

    Android phones are everywhere.

    Google and the Chrome browser really ate into Microsoft’s dominance.

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• StarryPhoenix97@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  It’s Linux for me but I also have to assume tablet culture plays a role too.

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• Etterra@discuss.online ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  It’s almost like if you piss off your users then they’ll ditch you.

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• network_switch@lemmy.ml ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Mobile and I imagine Google Docs really did a number on Windows necessity. In my experience, large companies and government rely on Windows and O365, smaller organizations use Google Docs. Even universities I’ve seen start with classrooms a decade ago using Google Docs and hangouts to eventually using Google Suite or whatever its called these days for student/faculty email

  At least word documents saved as PDF and shared is way more common today than a decade ago. A decade ago I mainly remember seeing nothing but Excel and SPSS in classes, now I see professors showing how to do stuff in Google Sheets. For a long time computer science and math professors have been geeky and idealistic so you’d regularly see Libre/OpenOffice used in lectures

  Another is Blender. In like 2008 ~2.49 Blender, professionals would scoff. A decade later Blender 2.8 releases and by today I hear way less vitriol and more opensess as another tool in the toolbox or recognition as great for at least learning or professional use for smaller teams. Flow was a successful movie made with it

  Davinci Resolve is getting better and a lot more mainstream today than a decade ago. And stuff like Kdenlive is more powerful than the vast majority of people need. People were doing great stuff a decade+ ago with iMovie and basic Windows Movie Maker

  Video games are a lot easier now because of Valve with Linux

  Mobile, adults used to have laptop that pretty much excited to login to their credit cards and pay them, use TurboxTax, print out MapQuest directions, etc. Phones have made a laptop redundant I think for most people now. Work provides one if needed. TV for movies and phone for everything else

  To me there’s nothing Microsoft can do to stem the decline of Windows. Mobile first is standard now. Microsoft has no presence in smart TVs because they failed with Windows Mobile and Xbox hardware is on life support and they never made the stripped down Xbox Windows available for TV makers anyways. The loss towards mobile will continue.

  Then there’s national security concerns for countries around the world to be reliant on American software and hardware. Diversification of operating system has picked up heavily. It started like 20 years ago but it didn’t seem to really pick up until the Huawei sanctions and driving Huawei to their own OS and Chinese government to invest even more into domestic Linux distro a. Then the recent American trade wars renewing interest in European countries in Linux and LibreOffice. My understanding has been that Linux had had strong adoption in India for some time now

  Desktop Linux in the US, I say just keep focusing on prosumer/professional users. Software developers and other IT professionals are already Linux heavy. Some commercial software is available like Maya and Davinci Resolve. Krita and Blender are great. Kdenlive is good. Seems like GIMP and Inkscape development may be picking up momentum. Darktable is great. Valve keep focusing on SteamOS and community distros keep supporting more handhelds making every year easier and easier for gaming

  Outside of the US, I feel like Trump both term one and now term two has really given Linux and open source software a global boost in appeal

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• XiozTzu@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  They don’t care they have Azure now.

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• some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Welcome in from the cold. We have hot cocoa and blankets.

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• 3dcadmin@lemmy.relayeasy.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I must be in the minority but generally I like Win 11. Most of my clients still on Windows as well so I have to keep up to date…

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• Ugurcan@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I’m thinking they’re doing it on purpose. Think you’re a multibazillion company, want to quit your least profitable line of work (OS business) but it’s also your most famous front. Diluting a business is how you quit without scaring investors.

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• poopkins@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I know everybody’s here to rag on Microsoft, but I honestly am quite pleased with Windows 11. I comfortably do software development in an Ubuntu shell using the Widows Subsystem for Linux and it honestly works like a charm. Then I can unplug and play video games in Steam and everything works great, there, too.

  Of course this is all possible on Linux, but my point here is that Windows really isn’t as awful as everybody makes it out to be.

  Meanwhile, MacOS enters into a second decade of no innovation. It still relies on Homebrew for developer tools, still lacks any substantial improvements to Xcode and only ever receives iterative cosmetic changes like video lock screens and the new bundle of desktop backgrounds for its latest “update.”

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• fossilesque@mander.xyz ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Image

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• youngalfred@lemmy.zip ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  No source for the blog post. Here it is: windows blog

  Note that the number has been updated, and at the bottom they state that that figure has been updated.

  The original text said ‘over a billion’. 1.4 billion is over a billion.

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• jaybone@lemmy.zip ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Given there’s 7 billion people on earth, I’m a bit surprised this number is so low at only 1.4 billion. People will usually have a home computer and then use one at work, plus all the devices in data centers and other environments where they are not used as a desktop.

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• ano_ba_to@sopuli.xyz ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  They just had to copy the walled garden approach of the competitors, and badly at that. They could have not pursued forcing users to a Microsoft account. They could’ve avoided the telemetry and ads business(/bloat). Google has them beat there anyway. They had the more open alternative to Google and Apple but they’re trying terribly to be second fiddle to them. And now Linux has become a good enough alternative to what Windows should’ve been. They are still the choice for business machines, but they’ve been terrible with consumer devices.

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