Microsoft EVP Yusuf Mehdi said in a blog post last week that Windows powers over a billion active devices globally. This might sound like a healthy number, but according to ZDNET, the Microsoft annual report for 2022 said that more than 1.4 billion devices were running Windows 10 or 11. Given that these documents contain material information and have allegedly been pored over by the tech giant’s lawyers, we can safely assume that Windows’ user base has been quietly shrinking in the past three years, shedding around 400 million users.
This is probably why Microsoft has been aggressively pushing users to upgrade to Windows 11 after the previous version of the OS loses support — so that its users would install the latest version of Windows on their current system (or get a new PC if their system is incapable of running the latest version). Although macOS is a threat to Windows, especially with the launch of Apple Silicon, we cannot say that those 400 million users all went and bought a MacBook. That’s because, as far back as 2023, Mac sales have also been dropping, with Statista reporting the computer line, once holding more than 85% of the company revenue, now making up just 7.7%.
I strongly suspect most of them are people who had a PC, but now just use a tablet and phone for everything.
All those family photos at risk of being lost to a dodgy HDD that makes weird clicking noises when you accessed certain folders, now “safely” “stored” in Facebook’s AI data training centres.
Who is storing photos with meta? I get they ae accessing them but they are likely stored on icloud of gdrive. Both of which I would prefer over microsoft. Tbh I would prefer stone tablet carvings to microsoft.
Yeah, definitely iCloud most likely
I bet many of these “lost” users were windows installed on signage displays, and other similar stuff
You’ve not lived until you’ve seen a bunch of self-serve petrol pumps out of order, with a quarter of a BSOD on each.
I need to figure out what it takes to move my Minecraft save files from Windows to Linux. Should have started it long ago but never got around to it. It’s quite literally the only thing I’ve used Windows for in a decade. Everything else I’ve always used Linux compatible stuff if not Linux itself for the last 26 years.
Are these modded worlds? If not, it should be plug in and play. I didn’t have any problems when I moved my worlds.
I’d recommend Prism for your Linux minecraft launcher.
i installed prism on a whim a while back when i felt like Minecraft for a day.
it just seems to work out of the box with all mods I’ve tried
I’ve had one or two issues with using mods on Prism, but for the most part it’s been working out of the box for mods too.
Probably quite easy if you use the Java edition.
You copy and paste it, if it’s the java version.
Java is cross-platform lol
I’ve moved enough things in the past to know that things aren’t always as cross-platform as they seem and to not take anything for granted. Even txt files are cross platform and we all know there is that carriage return issue.
no surprise. people are using phones more, and tablets/chromebooks, too, to a lesser extent. there’s a lot of folks here that only use their phones now.
all sorts of reasons why people are dumping their windows pc… but microsoft has yet to come up with a good reason why they should keep them or upgrade. none. not a single one.
Even old windows games does no longer work on windows BTW.
If someone can get Ground Control 2 working again, I’ll name my first born after you.
This page seems to suggest that it works fine in Linux (otherwise, why would it have notes for Linux users that don’t include anything about it not working?)
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Ground_Control_II:_Operation_Exodus
That took me three seconds to google lol
Hm, whenever I’ve tried to get it running on both windows and Linux there just a black screen. But thinking about it, there was seething about some USB devices causing that. Maybe I’ll have a second go at it
Not playable in a VM?
Lots of current reviews on Steam say it still works. Unless you mean multiplayer, could always use a tunnel for “lan” gaming.
In my experience, this is usually the result of DRM. Most of my physical library of PC games doen’t work because they use some kind of variation of StarForce. If you go back far enough, yes the old 16-bit titles don’t work, and DOS hasn’t been properly supported since pre-XP. Things like games not supporting widescreen resolutions or running some kind of bizarre deprecated library is often quite fixable. For all the criticisms I have of Windows, getting old games to work hasn’t really been one of them.
Games for Windows Live can go to hell though.
When it comes to 16-bit games dosbox(-x) and other derivatives are your friends. Works on both windows and Linux
That’s one of the reasons I use Linux as my daily driver. I’m not playing high end games, I only play old windows games from my childhood.
High end games work just fine as well.
That’s really a pretty staggering fact when you think about it. Windows has jumped the shark so completely that you prefer Linux for running old Windows games. I feel like even just 5 years ago, most folks would find a statement like that completely bizarre, and now it’s taken as entirely sensible.
It has been so entertaining to watch these idiots trash one of the most dominant market positions in the history of markets. Just amazing stuff. And I really think we’re gonna see that get even worse! I should be buying stock in popcorn lol
Those popcorn stocks went through the roof when Donald Duck got elected president of the United states though
I think it’s mainly because the entire PC market is shrinking. Most people use phones and tablets these days and those don’t come with Windows.
and people love to work on Macs because its more convenient than windows when they are programming too.
Gaming and corporate software are the last strongholds, but mobile gaming keeps growing and I see more and more people using tablets for office work. Especially when companies keep moving more of their core applications to the cloud with web/app interfaces.
lol corporate isn’t a stronghold. It’s a big part were the erosion is coming from. So many businesses don’t need x86 and windows any more. Low power arm is the current hotness and ai is an expensive joke
I see that, too. Always makes me feel like a boomer (despite being in the wrong age group to be one), because I like my computer for the hundred and something keys which fit snuggly underneath all fingers, the separate keys for brackets and umlauts and numbers. And that I can open and operate like 3 programs next to each other while doing work. Somehow people younger than me(?) do it very differently.
(Plus I can install an operating system I really like on my computer.)
I’m forced to use windows for work and I absolutely loathe it. I’d rather go home and use my mac than deal with all the bloat, ads and nonsense. I just find it insufferable.
Yeah I can’t believe my employer forces me to use a computer that’s constantly popping up trying to get me to play games or read gossip.
ya so much for productivity tools haha!
I use Windows Server and Azure, and everything Microsoft touches is garbage, including Azure and all their new stuff.
my old state uni and my current job uses microsoft apps/azure. and i noticed the computers at work already upgraded to a newer version. the UI looks terrible.
I think it’s both. People who’ve never before really considered using Linux have started migrating off of Windows ever since the end of service announcement for Win10.
Sure. But I think the total number of desktop Linux users is a two digit millions number. So those few millions we’ve attracted lately are more a decimal point when talking about 400 million. They’re there and part of the picture, though.
I’m seeing that a lot with traffic. It’s been a steady tick up on mobile and a steady downward for PCs in general. People just use their phones for more things now. And I don’t see that trend changing. Including this comment.
Source: web dev with a site that helps maintain a pretty big corporate site.
That’s most likely it. Most of the world is running on a smartphone.
That sounds horrible
This is a great example of people taking sides and not seeing past their own noses about it.
Also of not reading past the headline, but whatever.
If I have to choose between the janky but unlocked environment of Windows and a world of iOS and Googlified Android users I’d pick Windowsland in a heartbeat.
We need a better integrated device open alternative, and fast.
I’m sorry, I don’t really get it. What sides? And who didn’t read the article? That’s their main conclusion as well. Plus they add some fluff before and after. But that’s not really important. Could you maybe explain what an “device open alternative” is? I don’t know that term. And it’s kind of hard to find anything just by googling “device open”.
I’m talking about all the people going “good” in this thread out of hostility for Windows/MS without realizing the change being described is a move to a more closed-off, privacy-invasive environment, not the opposite. Which is a result of either not reading past the headline or being so polarized on the issue that they are willing to take the downsides for the sake of schadenfreude.
As for what I meant by that vague term, I just didn’t want to say “an open mobile OS”. Mostly because… well, it invites a lot of open questions about Android I don’t think are interesting right now, but also because I think “mobile OS” is increasingly a misnomer.
People are clearly using iOS and Android as their main computing platforms now, both of them are rolling out full multi-window desktops for larger devices out of the box and they’re both already usable that way with limitations right now. When you say “mobile OS” people visualize a phone and want to talk about Linux on phones and… that’s probably not the right answer or the right way to look at it.
Thanks for explaining. It’s a bit tricky if you invent words without explaining them at the same time.
You’re right. I’m used to read stupid takes here on Lemmy, so I mainly ignored those. It is like you said. People are moving more towards mobile devices where they’re not in control of anything. They’re mostly walled gardens. You don’t get administrator privileges, Google or whoever is making those choices for you. And they’re so easy to use, you don’t even learn anything about the internet and their inner workings. It’s all a service and content magically appears on your screen. All of that is a step down from where we’ve been before.
I struggle to recommend Microsoft instead. While it’s still a computer and that definitely changes things, they’re headed in exactly the same direction. Everything is set on spying per default these days, and they also try to lure you in into their walled gardens, paid services instead if owning software or disk space… It’s not the same level. But not good either.
Ideally we don’t want any of them to be in control of our platforms and devices, but have some control ourselves. With smartphones that’s next to impossible. With windows you might be able to pull it off if you put in some effort, since it’s not the default experience. Given it’s something that can be changed.
Good. Stop treating your users like shit.
lol, the MBAs will go “we have less users now, that means we need to shit on the remaining ones even harder so we can still meet our growth targets”.
Hehe, I don’t think they will. Looks to me they must be aware of this. Likely they weighed their options and they do this on purpose.
They know. Microsoft is now a service company. Windows upgrades are free. Do you remember when Microsoft said that windows 10 is the last windows?
Now the upgrade to 11 is free, Microsoft is a service company… Windows is only a platform to sell you an office 365 subscription, copilot bullshit and grabbing your information.
They know the Windows days are numbered, and they are going to extract the most juice out of it until it dies.
In their head, the only OS you’ll need in the future is a browser, until then, tough luck peasants.
Correct answer. And I think we’ve been there. We had serial terminals and thin clients before. Just that they were operated by your university or employer and not a for profit megacorp. We even had projects like FirefoxOS, interestingly enough not by Microsoft back then. But the idea was to move everything into the browser.
It’s certainly going to help any of the service providers. Any data and control moves away from the user, onto their computers and into their control.
Yes, we are going back to the mainframe era. It started gradually with “the cloud”.
I remember the first days of “the cloud”, when people were not keen to give their data to other companies: “we aren’t going to put all our data on the internet!”. Yet, here we are.
Today, when I bring slightly the idea we could host our operations, I am seen like the crazy one.
Slowly but surely, everything is being locked down in the hands of a few.
The costs are raising, our freedom is diminished, and our privacy is gone.
Linux is like the only bastion remaining. I hope we all take care of this one!
when I bring slightly the idea we could host our operations, I am seen like the crazy one
Interestingly enough, it’s the opposite at my company. Mostly due to how damn fucking expensive things like AWS are.
We priced out a VM host, and we determined that if we strongly policed turning off the VMs when we weren’t using them, using AWS would cost as much as a completely new local VM host every 6 months. And again, that is IF we police the fuck out of turning off the VMs, which we all knew wouldn’t happen.
We have local VM hosts now.
Interesting, I’m assuming you’re comparing running via ECS yeah? My current gripe is that doing everything serverless is reasonably priced, but it ends up adding a bunch of annoying complexity. Like enough that after more than a year we still don’t have things standardized all that well and I still get bitten by stuff sometimes.
Edit: sorry you said VMs referring to cloud hosted too, I missed that. Yeah, that’s expensive, and the serverless alternatives can get annoying.
Linux is like the only bastion remaining. I hope we all take care of this one!
I certainly hope so. And at this point Linux is too big to fail. And some clever people are shaping it and keeping corporate interests in check.
It’s an interesting situation. Linux is on my computer and helps me emancipate myself and stay in control. At the same time it’s also Linux powering the cloud and the big services.
Plus I even have Linux on my phone. But it’s usually a really weird one, full of Google stuff and spyware. (Well… mine isn’t.)But I feel how things change. It’s getting harder each day to live without smartphones, proprietary apps and cloud services. And since everyone else is doing it, the alternatives might just vanish. I still don’t understand why companies forfeit control, even if they have a appropriate size and business type where it makes sense to have own people and hardware, but hey…
I don’t think they going to stop now. They even forced users to create Windows accounts in order to use Windows 11. They will also force Copilot to be installed on Windows 11.
Did we ever ask M$ for this AI spy tool? No.
I for one have been a WIndows user (developing apps) since 3.0. And now I’m ditching it for Linux because of clusterfuck Windows 11 is (also to some extent Windows 10). WIll have to run a Windows virtual machine but only for developing long term legacy WIndows .NET Framework apps. For other development (Android, .NET with Avalonia, Blazor, some Rust etc) I’ll use Linux natively.
This is alot like me. Two years ago I ditched windows and there have been some bumps but I’m happy to have done it. It took me about a month to find Linux equivalents for everything. I still have a VM with windows so I can run a legacy dev tool but that’s the last thing.
I’m also the IT guy for a small (20 person) company. Now I have to get all of them to adopt Linux. I’m for sure not supporting the heap of junk that is Win 11.
How do you connect to Windows VM? RDP clients struggle with multimonitor support AFAIK. Also what virtualization you use?
Oracle VirtualBox
Right with you. I’ve been using Macintoshes for work, Windows for gaming/personal, and Linux for servers for several decades now and I’m finally done with Windows altogether. I’ve needed a good excuse to ditch Windows and 11 has been an excellent one. The Steam Deck has proven to me I have little need for Windows anymore. I can survive without the one or two games that don’t run on it.
If only my work supported Linux for desktops/laptops…
I also grew up on Windows and spent my whole career with it, personal machines too. Decades of use. Made the switch over the holidays, only one Windows box left in the house and its days are numbered. I’m even replacing Chromebooks with old business class Dell laptops running Linux.
Totally done with these companies, but Windows in particular is just an abomination these days.
Steam has especially made ditching Windows for gaming s lot easier.
And that is a true game changer. 🍿
Microsoft’s terrible OS and even worse sentiment for the user is killing the PC hardware business. Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc need to turn to Linux.
The Year of Linux… maybe? LOL
The author is reading WAAAY too much into a blog post statement. “More then a billion” could also mean 1.4 billion just like in 2022 but it just sounds better. Plus, you can’t just compare a number from a blog post with an annual report. It’s like comparing apples and oranges. I think this article is just wishful thinking.
Once I know there will be 99% reliability on Linux for the games I play, I’ll happily ditch Windows. I feel like we’re slowly getting there. I’ve only ever used Windows/Mac/ChromeOS, so I suspect there would be some adjustment.
Checked my profile against ProtonDB, unless I’m reading this wrong and someone could explain, looks like it’s almost there, but not yet.
Already there.
Yeah it’s about there now, proton and wine do amazing things
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