[gethly]

On desktop, unknown OS cannot be anything else but Linux, so that's 20% altogether(16%+4%). But that does not matter. The shift has started last year when W10 support ended and due to how bad W11 is and it is just getting stronger and stronger. Watch increase in YT videos about moving from Windows to Linux, or social networks in general. You cannot miss it. I've been on windows since 95, before that DOS. So that is three decades of being a loyal customer, so to speak. Even though I tried Linux in the past, Windows just works so I had no reason to switch.

With W11, that is not the case. Therefore, it becomes inevitable. Worth mentioning is that companies, governments and whole countries are ditching Microsoft altogether - for various reasons(some are geopolitical, due to sanctions and tariffs, others are technical).

Lenovo, Dell and HP are slowly ditching W11 as well in favour of linux. If you look up definitions of malware and spyware, windows 11 falls into both of them. It's that bad. So again, I'm not a linux fanboy by any stretch of imagination, but the writing is not just on the wall, we've passed the point of no return. Or rather, Microsoft has.

Now that linux supports 95% of games, there is little holding people back as gaming was always the biggest hurdle when it came to linux. And Adobe, too, is no longer what keeps people stuck on Windows - either because they ditched it due to their horrible pricing practices, or because there are now solid alternatives.

Of course many people will switch to mac as well. But windows in general, i think, is done. It had a good run for few decades, but they dropped the ball so hard that there is no going back or fixing it with w12.

[keeda]

All these points are brought up all the time but the upshot is, based on reporting from Microsoft and StatCounter, Windows marketshare actually grew.

Point is, we techies might chafe at and complain about all these anti-consumer shenanigans (Meta and privacy, anyone?) but it does not affect their business momentum, probably because the rest of the world just doesn't care.