That is why the majority of the world's population who need a desktop or laptop will continue to use Windows, albeit in the form of pirated activation in more than 70% of cases.

Because there was and still is no real alternative to Windows, taking all factors into account.

M$ just needs to completely lose its reputation and any remaining trust (much like in the dollar), so that everyone rushes in a panic to look for other solutions.

This will only happen if M$ announces that it will stop developing Windows or remove compatibility with the entire x86 codebase. Why would they do this, cut the branch on which they (and the USA) are sitting globally? Moreover, I am 100% sure that Apple/Alphabet(Google)/M$/Intel/AMD/Qualcomm/Mediatek and other key companies are working closely with the NSA/CIA and in general with the US authorities to maintain geopolitical influence in the world through technological superiority and dependence on US technology. Therefore, even if the Indian Nadella decided to destroy Windows, he would simply be fired and kicked out, because it is not for him to decide these issues, but for the deep US authorities. As in the case of Intel and other key companies, they have not resolved any key issues for a long time without direct agreement with the US authorities or that top party in the US that really controls everything. This is only the appearance of independence of companies from the authorities; in reality, it has long been gone. Capitalism has long turned into imperialism for obvious reasons.

Quote from: NikoB on May 08, 2024, 21:53:13... Is there competition and choice?

Not really.

Quote from: Hotz on May 08, 2024, 17:54:08And Windows 10 wasn't great either at the beginning.

It is still extremely bad as an OS, everyone has just accepted it. Is there competition and choice?

QuoteWindows 10 currently holds 70.03% of the market share. Windows 11, on the other hand, has seen another drop, from 26.68% in March to 25.65% in April.

Let's be realistic here. These are peanuts and will be history in very few months.

Because this exact same thing also happened in the past for Windows 10. There were a couple of months where Windows 10 market share lost some minor percentages and Windows 7 gained some percentages. Did it change the widespread adoption of Windows 10? Nope. Not at all. And Windows 10 wasn't great either at the beginning.

If the OS market share is more than 25%, no sane (not malicious) browser manufacturer will refuse to support this version. And as long as there are current versions of browsers, most do not care about ephemeral "security", which in reality does not exist in any OS on the planet.

It all comes down to browser support and key software needed by a significant portion of users. Once it disappears, after about 1 year they are forced to switch to a new OS.

Thus, W10 will be relevant at least until the end of 2026 and around the same time official support for LTSB 2016 and LTSC 2021 will end. But the question is how will support be provided for LTSC 1809 (2018 with a 10-year update channel), support for which is stated until the end of 2028. This is it interesting point.

W11 is extremely slow on old hardware and consumes a lot of memory. At the same time, it does not have any significant advantages, but there are a lot of disadvantages. W11 LTSC will need to be evaluated when the final version comes out in the fall of 2024. There will be at least a 5-year update channel. In any case, on old hardware, W11 is not interesting until 2026 and most likely until 2029. And then we'll see...

Didn't spent much time on 8/8.1 and only on my SP3. It didn't seem *bad*, but it didn't seem as good as 7 or 10. But that could just be because the Surface itself was garbage. The common opinion at the time, though was that 8 wasn't very good and 8.1 was a big improvement over it, making it much better. After all, it's the only version since 3/3.11 that actually had such a major update they incremented it that way (unless you could XP SP1/SP2, but IIRC those were really just collections of all the minor updates to that point). So that should say something about the quality of 8. So I'm not sure if those praising 8 actually mean 8.1, or if they genuinely though 8 was that good. Maybe it was, I don't know, as I said, I didn't use it much. But then, there's lots of people saying 11 is great, as good as or better than 10, and I definitely don't agree with that, so clearly there's varied opinion on what's good and what's not.

I'm just curious to see where these numbers go over the next year as 10's EOL approaches and passes. The fact 10 is gaining ground and 11 is losing it despite new computers being sold with 11 really says a lot to me. I foresee 10 being the new XP with people clinging on well past its EOL, and it will be interesting to see if MS extends it like they've done before or if we end up in a situation where a LOT of people are on an increasingly unsecure OS with a decent percentage finally jumping ship over to Linux, which continues to improve as Windows continues to decline.

XP really was the last "golden OS" with a real "user experience". This is the last OS in which you could completely disable the page file and work only from RAM with excellent response. This is the last OS where the system latency was an order of magnitude lower than that of subsequent versions. That is why the sound engineers loved it so much and sat on it until the very end.

W8.1 was simply a polished W7, but it had one extremely negative drawback, which, to the sadness of all professionals, migrated to W10-11 - the lack of a classic theme with compact window control buttons. In W7 this topic was still there, but the vile M$ deliberately disabled V-Sync in this topic, which supposedly worked in browsers in the Aero theme (I personally checked this statement and V-Sync does not work in W7 there either). I didn't care much about the tiles - all this can be easily removed, but there is no way to return the classic theme without a patch of system DLLs in W8-11 for the most compact (packed) interface on the same screen resolution in comparison with W7 and older ones.

Another interesting point about W10 vs W11 - without any patch of system DLLs in W11 you can return the beautiful analog clock of W7, but this is not possible in W10. Apparently M$ deliberately returned this as a setting in order to somehow lure users away from W10.

This fall, W11 LTSC is finally being released, which means that M$ is finally confident that it has at least some kind of stable kernel for the enterprise version with a long-term (5+ years) service channel. Let me remind you that the W10 LTSB came out a year later in 2016.
The funny thing is that W11 is essentially destined for the same fate as W8.1 - it is a pass-through OS in front of W12 (in which obviously user spying tools from M$ will reach new heights).

I would love to use LTSB, but the new drivers do not support it and there is no support for VP9/AV1 hardware decoders, or rather wrappers with VLD video driver decoders for browsers.

In addition, as I already wrote in LTSC 1809, Google deliberately disabled support for the old VP9/AV1 hardware decoding method, which worked until about version 100 of Chrome, as I discovered. I was never able to return VP9 hardware acceleration under LTSC 1809, although I installed the latest versions of the VP9 wrapper from the M$ store. In LTSC 2021, everything already works as before, even with the same old video drivers from 2020. But LTSC 2021 is even worse than 1809 and it only has 5 years of support, in contrast to 10 years of 1809. So, LTSC 1809 lovers are already being slowly smoked out by such vile methods to LTSC 2021 or W11 LTSC 2024.

You can recall other disadvantages and advantages of each version, but it will take a long time to write. And no one knows 100% of all the problems.

In any case, the new hardware will force everyone to switch first to W11 and then to W12, even if the idiotic neural networks didn't give in to you in vain. Or go to Linux and constantly wait for years for support for current hardware and constantly struggle with a hellish mess and a complete lack of responsibility in a team consisting of "a swan, a crayfish and a pike."

Edit:

Err,  win 10 / 7 / xp **

Quote from: Jerry on May 07, 2024, 16:13:57Windows 8 was garbage worse than vista. 

Please do not mention ignorant statements if you've no idea what you're on about.

Quote from: Plants on May 03, 2024, 10:46:43Windows 8 was really nice and literally the leanest Windows since 2K. Wish I could still run it.

+10,000% agreed, couldn't have said it better myself. Thank you. Can't believe people keep going on about win 7 / xp being the "golden era" of windows.

They weren't. Real (power) users know win 8 (along with 2k) were peak / pinnacle windows experience. Never forget.

Quote from: Jerry on May 07, 2024, 16:13:57Is this sarcasm?  Windows 8 was garbage worse than vista.  I'm no boomer.

W8.1 is really much better than W7 and faster than W10 and even more so W11. But it was less popular.

Quote from: Plants on May 03, 2024, 10:46:43

Quote from: kek on May 01, 2024, 22:24:56Windows 11 is Windows 8 all over, except now the dreaded changes comes in an AI package. If Microsoft thinks people will go back just to use some gimmicky AI features, they better think twice.

What are you talking about? Windows 8 was really nice and literally the leanest Windows since 2K. Wish I could still run it.

Are you one of the boomers who were complaining about the useless Start button being replaced with a hot corner freeing up taskbar space?

Is this sarcasm?  Windows 8 was garbage worse than vista.  I'm no boomer.

Quote from: kek on May 01, 2024, 22:24:56Windows 11 is Windows 8 all over, except now the dreaded changes comes in an AI package. If Microsoft thinks people will go back just to use some gimmicky AI features, they better think twice.

What are you talking about? Windows 8 was really nice and literally the leanest Windows since 2K. Wish I could still run it.

Are you one of the boomers who were complaining about the useless Start button being replaced with a hot corner freeing up taskbar space?

W11 has a few bugs that W10 does not have. For example, when switching users, W11 sometimes does not log out the first user so I have to toggle WLAN manually. W11 wastes even more storage. The W11 GUI is blown up unnecessarily: my empty start menu is ridiculously huge. W11 needs yet a few more tweaks against telemetry. Nothing serious but all annoying enough to keep W10 on my other computer as long as possible. W7 was the best by far but the code has not kept up with current hardware. Microsoft has been too stupid to keep the W7 GUI and just change the code.

Just do what I do, permanently disable WiFi connection on your Win11 PC and install Linux as a dual boot.  Never use Windows for online activities, do it on Linux instead!  Eternal peace and bliss of the mind!

My work computer was switched over to 11 a week or two ago and within about 5 minutes I found 3-4 fairly major things about it that were annoying and impossible to change to how they were before. Since then, I've found at least a few other things and I've also found the taskbar to be either glitchy or just downright broken and it seems slightly slower overall, especially File Explorer. So despite reading here and there over the past couple years that it's matured and has been perfectly usable for at least that long, my experience strongly suggests otherwise. Based on my time with it so far, there is absolutely no way I will switch to 11. I'll keep using 10 and just reinforce it myself or get my hands on the corporate security updates, or I'll finally make the move to Linux. Because if I have to deal with all these ridiculous design decisions that MS is forcing on us with 11, I may as well just deal with the issues on the Linux side and at least be done with MS and their complete disregard for users.