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posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday May 04 2016, @08:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the they-had-a-good-run dept.

Venture Beat reports on "preview data that has NOT been reviewed by Quality Assurance" from Net Applications showing that, among desktop operating systems used for browsing the 40,000 participating Web sites, Microsoft Windows has fallen to 80.23% market share. The 1.22% decline from the previous month is unusual; Windows had been gradually losing share since November of 2007, when it was at 95.89%. OS X makes up 9.20% of the market (slightly less than Windows XP's 9.66% share) and Linux 1.56%.


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  • (Score: 2) by Nuke on Wednesday May 04 2016, @09:13AM

    by Nuke (3162) on Wednesday May 04 2016, @09:13AM (#341362)

    Amazing, considering MS have been ramming it* down Win7 user's throats for some time. As I cannot believe that most Win7 users would or could prevent it happening, what's the hold-up? Are MS's servers running at saturation point?

    * Yes, yes, before someone says it is not "ramming" because one can turn the update off, or reverse it, so can someone having shit rammed down their throat kick the rammer in the balls or spew it back in his face. Such people are in the minority in the same way though.

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @09:42AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @09:42AM (#341372)

      I'm assuming a big part is business users and other organizations. For example, my university has a few classrooms full of Win7 PCs, which replaced classrooms full of Macs only a year or two ago.

      Hell, doesn't MS still offer WinXP support & patches to corporate customers willing to pay for it?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @06:45PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @06:45PM (#341613)

        Some of Blighty's bureaucrats paid for that for about a year.
        May 26, 2015 UK.gov confirms it's binned extended Windows XP support [theregister.co.uk]

        New South Wales did too.
        I'm sure that every one of us would like to have a tiny piece of that action.
        NSW Govt spends half a million dollars on XP support [theregister.co.uk]

        business users and other organizations

        In response to the story about the weather girl with Lose10 nagware, there were several mentions that an organization of any size should have an IT staff that is versed in how to block stuff they DON'T want.

        I will, however, concede that there are PHBs who want the M$ treadmill to always be turned up to 11.

        ...then there's the city fathers of Munich who passed out to their constituents (gratis) thousands of plastic discs containing Ubuntu.
        ...with the city's infrastructure being over 96 percent MICROS~1-free.

        -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @10:35AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @10:35AM (#341385)

      "Amazing, considering MS have been ramming it* down Win7 user's throats for some time. As I cannot believe that most Win7 users would or could prevent it happening, what's the hold-up? Are MS's servers running at saturation point?"

      Actually I think Win7 users are indeed managing to fend it off as much as possible. There were a lot of surprise switches to Windows 10 originally when Microsoft started with the shady tactics to sneak Win10 over, but the ones remaining are probably using that control panel thing to stop Win10 related backports to Win7, cutting off updates entirely (especially after the sneaky attempt to throw Win10 nagware into a security fix) or combing through all updates manually before letting them install.

      Then you have the large business section that does all of the above to make sure Windows 10 doesn't get put on their network since that can result in major downtime if the required programs don't work on Win10. (I think MS is currently leaving Win7 Enterprise users alone though since they're usually the ones with the money for lawyers.)

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by mcgrew on Wednesday May 04 2016, @01:13PM

        by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Wednesday May 04 2016, @01:13PM (#341424) Homepage Journal

        W10 was on this computer all of 45 minutes before I rolled it back. When they stop supporting W7 I'll do like the XP box - take it off the network. I'll have to write .doc files on W7 then upload them to magazines with Linux, because W10 is a big bucket of effluent that made the computer slow and butt-ugly, added no functionality that I could detect or have heard of, and removed MS Office, Firefox, and Thunderbird.

        And Microsoft wonders why they can't sell that turd...

        --
        mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @12:26PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @12:26PM (#341405)

      Games (and other programs). Win 7 and to a lessor degree XP are the last great operating systems to cover games from several generations. It works with a minimum of fuss. There's a ton of software available (especially for XP since it is so long in tooth).

      Browsing on the internet is only half the story. I still keep an XP partition updated for when I need to run other software.

      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @01:23PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @01:23PM (#341430)

        Win 7 and to a lessor degree XP are the last great operating systems to cover games from several generations.

        You're right, but it's bullshit that this was the case. Windows does not support games. Game source code supports running on Windows. Game source code that set out with the goal of being cross platform can be compiled on any operating system. While it is true that due to MS dominance Games were programmed (and tested) to the Microsoft / Windows APIs, that doesn't mean MS did anything to make this happen, besides make a knock-off of OpenGL called DirectX and try the ol' vender lockin "embrace, extend, extinguish" route for graphics drivers, which gamedevs have been suffering with for decades. OpenGL has some buggy drivers thanks to MS doing all it can to hamper the speed and adoption of the open API / drivers making DirectX the API of necessity (not choice) for windows. However, DirectX has some really nasty bugs too. I esp. hate the ones we have to add workarounds for per GPU vendor / model. Point being, you have gamedevs to thank for their massive efforts to put up with all the bullshit hardware and OS vendors put us through and make the games work anyway.

        Gamedevs still have the source code, and if publishers would let them (or if it becomes necessary to do so) the devs can recompile their Windows games for Linux or Mac (and port the D3D calls to Vulkan or OpenGL).

        It would be like you saying, "Win 7 and XP are the last great OSs to cover Word Processing from several generations." Of course that would be a strange statement though, because any Word Processing Software Vendor can compile their code for OS. The OS isn't providing special code just for Word Processors. Nor SHOULD it do so for Games.

        That is to say, the hardware vendors should provide the same interface across platforms. It's in everyone's best interest (more platforms to sell on = sell more games & more hardware)... everyone but MS, that is. Thankfully cross platform is finally becoming the norm, with major engines like Unreal becoming open source and supporting Lin / Win / Mac. Today there's no technical reason for games to target just one platform (they do so thanks to exclusivity deals, or legacy codebases). Any new project can select a cross platform engine / toolchain; The OS isn't important, it's inconsequential, and MSs has only ever gotten in the way of progress. So, forgive me if I pray every day for MS's incompatible by design APIs to become less relevant. The sooner we get rid of proprietary graphics APIs the better.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @02:03PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @02:03PM (#341448)

          Problem is there is a ton of orphaned software in those ranks. There will be no recompiling, no reissues. Hell, even finding appropriate hardware is getting more tricky.

          But all of that applies to users of a certain generation that are locked-in to particular ecosystems.

          New users however are still up for grabs, and I can easily see the Age of Windows giving way to something else (I mean, is there anything to recommend Win10 to someone who isn't invested?).

        • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday May 04 2016, @05:12PM

          by jmorris (4844) on Wednesday May 04 2016, @05:12PM (#341549)

          You don't know what you are talking about. Windows -supports- games and older applications in a way Linux can only dream of. They expend huge amounts of developer time making sure backwards compatibility is maintained with old binaries.

          In the end it is more an argument for doing away with dependence on binaries because only a huge monopoly can afford the effort required to make it mostly work and now that Microsoft is down to mostly surviving from ads and malware they are increasingly unable to maintain the effort.

          I'd like to see a world where the copyright laws are subtly changed. BInaries should not be eligible for copyright, only as derived works. You should be required to distribute buildable source and include a one or more prebuilt binary images as a courtesy to the customer. That would not mean everything becomes "free software" or even OSF "Open Source" as the copyright would be just as much an enforceable thing as the copyright on a book, which includes the full "source." What it would do is open up a vast effort to port software and maintain it after the original publisher abandons it through patches against the copyrighted sources.

          Imagine if all platforms were like a modern Linux. Good package manager, dev tools assumed available, etc. You buy a game at Walmart. The package says it runs out of the box on a list of platforms. Yours isn't listed so you ask the Internet if it has been reported as buildable. If so, buy it, perhaps add a patch file from the Internet, and run the command to make a binary out of the source package and Bob's yer uncle. If not you can decide if you want to buy it anyway and give it a go.

          Does mean standalone apps and DRM are pretty much history. Games depending on a server still would still support it until the community made their own servers. If the server had enough of the content on it that wouldn't be easy.

          • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday May 05 2016, @08:24AM

            by aristarchus (2645) on Thursday May 05 2016, @08:24AM (#341958) Journal

            You don't know what you are talking about.

            Thus spake jmorris. Now we will never get our irony meter repaired, ever! The underwriters have refused insurance, because we have broken the irony meter at least a dozen times in the last week alone. jmorris, don't know what your are talking about! Rich!

            Imagine if all platforms were like a modern Linux. Good package manager, dev tools assumed available, etc. You buy a game at Walmart. The package says it runs out of the box on a list of platforms

            Alright. But one question. What is a "Walmart", and why would anyone "buy" a game there? I am trebly confused.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 05 2016, @04:09AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 05 2016, @04:09AM (#341906)

          ... make a knock-off of OpenGL called DirectX ...

          OpenGL's sound and input interfaces sure are kick-ass.

  • (Score: 2) by coolgopher on Wednesday May 04 2016, @09:41AM

    by coolgopher (1157) on Wednesday May 04 2016, @09:41AM (#341371)

    I'm surprised the Linux number is that high. I don't see anything about which 40k sites the data is for, maybe it's largely techie sites?

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @09:44AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @09:44AM (#341373)

      Maybe it's the families of techies, recently upgraded from Windows XP to "Windows Ubuntu" or "Windows Mint" :)

      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @07:22PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @07:22PM (#341643)

        If i work on any extended family member's computers, they get upgraded to Gnu+Linux. I won't work on windows or macs.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @08:13PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @08:13PM (#341682)

          And you probably get cursed to hell behind your back. I would stay out of it with extended family. Brothers, sisters, parents, yes - do your worst. But the rest, you need to keep it respectable.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @09:16PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @09:16PM (#341736)

            you probably get cursed to hell behind your back [for providing a more secure, more complete computing environment to Windoze sufferers]

            More typical response:
            "So, this does all the stuff that my old easily-infected junk did? Cool.
            ...and I never have to dick around with anti-virus ever again? VERY cool.
            ...and all for zero cost? Dude, you rock!"

            If you had ever installed Linux on somebody else's box then sat down with him (because you had actually used Linux and knew it) and guided him while he did all the tasks he had previously done with Windoze, you might have some useful data points to relate.

            Instead, you offer "probably".

            -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

    • (Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Wednesday May 04 2016, @10:06AM

      by Nerdfest (80) on Wednesday May 04 2016, @10:06AM (#341379)

      I thought it would be higher. I'm in tech, but I know quite a lot of people that run Linux now.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @08:15PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @08:15PM (#341683)

        Every one of the statcounter outfits counts|totals things differently, resulting in a pretty wide range of "truth".

        Additionally, I read a post by a guy who claimed to be a former insider who said that his outfit didn't count as "Linux" any distro that wasn't on *their* approved list of biggies.

        Robert Pogson has previously reviewed and tabulated some of those results.
        (We've discussed some of his analysis.) [soylentnews.org]
        He notes that "Other" comes up way too often in the results and its curve correlates with the Linux curve, indicating that that *IS* Linux and should be added to the Linux column.

        One of his histograms (regarding the home continent of MSFT) is particularly interesting.
        Linux Usage on Personal Computers Exceeds 5 Percent in North America [soylentnews.org]

        He has spotted significant Linux usage numbers in Malta, Bahrain, Reunion, Cuba, Gibraltar, Uruguay, Venezuela, Ethiopia, Finland...
        He notes that islands are particularly fertile ground for FOSS adoption.

        -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

    • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday May 04 2016, @01:19PM

      by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Wednesday May 04 2016, @01:19PM (#341426) Homepage Journal

      It said Linux had a 1.65% share, which is pretty small. Also, notice that it only covered "computer" OSes, not the computers we call phones and tablets. More and more people are surfing mcgrewbooks.com on those than desktops or laptops.

      If they considered Android, the Linux numbers would be far higher (my stats separate the two).

      --
      mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by mmcmonster on Wednesday May 04 2016, @03:41PM

        by mmcmonster (401) on Wednesday May 04 2016, @03:41PM (#341493)

        1.56% is actually kinda big.

        To put it another way: 1 in 64 people use Linux as a desktop OS.

        • (Score: 2) by Nuke on Wednesday May 04 2016, @06:05PM

          by Nuke (3162) on Wednesday May 04 2016, @06:05PM (#341583)

          1.56% is actually kinda big. To put it another way: 1 in 64 people use Linux as a desktop OS.

          You think that is big, but I don't. I do not know anywhere near 64 people well enoughto discuss operating systems, but I know several, not all techies, who use Linux on a desktop or laptop. Anecdotal I know, but this is in the UK where people are particularly fond of Windows. If you had asked me to guess I would have said 5%.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @07:27PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @07:27PM (#341646)

      i think it's low. probably mostly mainstream/establishment sites. Pop culture BS with plenty of spy scripts. Built just for hordes of windows users.

  • (Score: 2) by Marco2G on Wednesday May 04 2016, @10:41AM

    by Marco2G (5749) on Wednesday May 04 2016, @10:41AM (#341386)

    I am in the process of installing Linux on my office computer. I'll leave windows on a gaming PC on the network to stream via Steam.

    Now if only Linux would cooperate, that would be nifty...

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by mcgrew on Wednesday May 04 2016, @01:22PM

      by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Wednesday May 04 2016, @01:22PM (#341428) Homepage Journal

      Linux isn't an OS, it's a kernel. The OSes are Debian, Red Hat, Ubuntu, etc. Tip: Red Hat is for servers, it really sucks as a desktop. I used to like kubuntu before they mangled KDE. I'll probably replace it with Mint or XFCE.

      --
      mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
      • (Score: 3, Funny) by jimshatt on Wednesday May 04 2016, @01:35PM

        by jimshatt (978) on Wednesday May 04 2016, @01:35PM (#341438) Journal
        If we're going to be pedantic: Mint isn't a DE but a distro. You can't replace KDE with Mint, though you can replace KDE with Cinnamon or MATE (which may be what you mint ehr.. meant).
        • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @02:46PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @02:46PM (#341475)

          It's not a distro but a distribution.

        • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday May 04 2016, @06:50PM

          by tangomargarine (667) on Wednesday May 04 2016, @06:50PM (#341618)

          Not to mention there's actually a Mint XFCE distribution (which coincidentally I've been running for a few years).

          --
          "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @07:34PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @07:34PM (#341653)

            Mint calls each of its various spins, each built around a different desktop environment, an "edition".

            mcgrew did conflate some disparate notions.
            I've seen him do that before.
            He's picking up the FOSS lingo as he goes but let's remember that we all started at zero.

            -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @09:30PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @09:30PM (#341748)

      Can you be specific?

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

    • (Score: 2) by el_oscuro on Thursday May 05 2016, @01:49AM

      by el_oscuro (1711) on Thursday May 05 2016, @01:49AM (#341870)

      You mean like having steam available on Linux? [steampowered.com]

      I have been looking at getting Dying Light but am waiting for the price to drop a bit.

      And while distros like Ubuntu are more officially supported, I have been able to also run my Steam games on Oracle Linux.

      --
      SoylentNews is Bacon! [nueskes.com]
  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @10:44AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @10:44AM (#341387)

    When I add up the stats on the linked page I get:
    - Windows 88.77% vs TFS 80.23%
    - Mac 9.57% vs TFS 9.20%
    - Linux 1.65% vs TSF 1.56%

    Even XP's numbers are wrong 10.63% vs TFS 9.66%.

    • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Wednesday May 04 2016, @06:24PM

      by butthurt (6141) on Wednesday May 04 2016, @06:24PM (#341599) Journal

      You're entirely right. The 80.23% was my typo. I meant to type 89.23%, which I'd gotten from Venture Beat but as you say that's not right either and the proper figure is 88.77%. The other numbers I took from Venture Beat's article are also wrong in the way you point out. Thank you for catching that.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @07:19PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @07:19PM (#341640)

        Dude, don't be butthurt ... oh, too late ;-)

        Actually my OCD did not see anything close to 100% represented (even when allowing for 5% VAX OS usage) so I broke out the No 2 and tallied things up.

        • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Wednesday May 04 2016, @08:30PM

          by butthurt (6141) on Wednesday May 04 2016, @08:30PM (#341692) Journal

          There wasn't a "1.22% decline from the previous month" either: the March data show a 90.44% share for Windows, so there was a 1.67% drop. I'm guessing that the data were revised after the Venture Beat author looked at them.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @01:41PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @01:41PM (#341439)

    Given the brilliant W10 upgrade story, they clearly didn't want their market share to increase.

    I am a bit puzzled by their motive, though?

    • (Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday May 04 2016, @06:45PM

      by Scruffy Beard 2 (6030) on Wednesday May 04 2016, @06:45PM (#341614)

      "Never attribute malice to what can be adequately explained by incompetence."

      It may be that Microsoft got too arrogant. They assumed that people would never leave them, so their users might as well have latest version of Windows so that Microsoft can improve their image.

      Of course, if people have not upgraded yet, it must be because the process is too confusing: not that the users don't want it.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @08:34PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @08:34PM (#341696)

        I used a coworker's computer today that was Windows 10. It was 80% recognizable but I couldn't figure out how to shutdown or why so much shit was whizzing by me. Ended up pressing the hardware off button. Ahhh, so that's where it is. Refreshing.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @09:05PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @09:05PM (#341721)

          I couldn't figure out how to shutdown
          windows button -> power -> shut down
          Pretty much the exact same place as xp, vista and win 7. Even Ubuntu is similar. Not exactly sure how you missed it. Unless you are being dramatic and making shit up?

          Or even better push the power button on the box. It does the same thing. Which is what most people I know do.

          The decline is *easy* to find out why. People are figuring out they do not need a full out computer to do 99% of the stuff they do. A amazon fire or ipad or even their smart phone will do most of what they want. For someone like me I need a decent full out computer that can run linux/bsd/windows. For my dad? He can get away with an iPad. He does exactly that because he does not need or want the flexibility.

  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday May 04 2016, @02:02PM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 04 2016, @02:02PM (#341446) Journal

    People may be dumb. And, they are generally even dumber en masse. But, that doesn't mean that they are STUPID. If Microsoft insists on abusing people, they are only going to keep the masochists, who enjoy being abused. The rest will reach their limit for being abused, then start looking around for something different. Android, Mac, Linux, BSD - anything is going to look better than MS when people get tired of being abused.

    I wish that could be a total win for Linux, but that's not really likely. What is more likely is, Apple's walled garden will look more appealing to MS refugees. "Apple always has been expensive, that's probably because they are better. Well, now that MS is going to shit, maybe I'll cough up the money for an Apple."

  • (Score: 2) by bitstream on Wednesday May 04 2016, @10:14PM

    by bitstream (6144) on Wednesday May 04 2016, @10:14PM (#341788) Journal

    If Microsoft OS and browser goes down. Then where is the growth taking place as in the highest growth rate and not in actual share as of now?

    Win-10 is btw, probably good marketing for all other OS:s out there..

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 05 2016, @12:35AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 05 2016, @12:35AM (#341850)

    I bet the reality is that the rise of these devices are causing the 'drop'.