Surpassing Windows 7's Market Share For the First Time, Windows 10 Now the Most Popular Desktop OS From Microsoft (betanews.com) 166
Two and a half years after the company made it available to the general public, Windows 10 is now the most popular operating system from Microsoft, according to analytics firm StatCounter. From a report: Every month, StatCounter reports on the state of the desktop operating system market. Since October last year, the analyst company's figures have shown the gap between Windows 10 and Windows 7 narrowing. It looked as if the newer OS would overtake the older one in November, but that didn't happen, and it didn't happen in December either. However, in January, according to StatCounter, Windows 10 finally claimed the top spot. The latest figures show Windows 10 on 42.78 percent, up from 41.69 percent in December 2017. That's an increase of 1.09 percentage points.
ATMs (Score:3, Funny)
Re: ATMs (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd like to know how many people are using 10 because they can't find computers with 7.
Re: ATMs (Score:5, Insightful)
Roughly 100% of them.
(1% error margin)
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Guess I'm part of the 1% now.
I upgraded to 10 pretty quickly after it was out - first upgrading my Win8 machine (I actually bought a disc copy of Windows 8), then eventually my Win7 machines as it got better. My entire array of Windows boxes are now on 10, and I haven't felt any desire to go back.
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Win10 is working fine for me, even on 2011-era HW (Phenom II desktop and i3 Thinkpad X220). Sure, it's a bit crap to have two separate control panels, and I'm not a fan of the forced update policy, nor of the tracking.
But there are a lot of everyday usage improvements that make it worth it. The improved task manager, file copy/move/delete status window, one easy place to enable all "developer options" (Powershell by default, show all hidden/system files, full paths in explorer, those things).
If they could j
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Wow, who pooped into your corn flakes this morning?
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I saw the same post on pretty much every story today.
Re: ATMs (Score:4, Interesting)
Being that windows 10 has been out for a Long time now, I am surprised how long Windows 7 held on for.
Windows 10 being out for 2.5 years is a long time to take over an older version of Windows.
However I expect there are some other factors involved.
1. Lack of innovation on PC's. Having a PC that is now over 6 years old still runs plenty fast for most computing needs, even some modern popular PC Games will still work on older equipment. Back in the 1990's We would upgrade our PC every 4 years. in the 2000's it is every 6 years, now in the 2010s it seems to be at least 8 years. With the 4 year after a couple of years people will just get new systems with the new OS.
2. Windows 8/10 Tablet interface. I am sorry, the new interface still hasn't got me sold. I am using a PC with a keyboard and a mouse, I do not need big touch friendly displays, taking up real estate. Or worse, blasting out to full screen for some other options. What is worse this interface is on the newest version of Windows Server. With the Search icon (A Circle with a line attached) is next to the power off icon (A Semi Circle with a Line). Granted we never had an accident with this yet. It is just really bad location for it. Windows 7 is still rather optimized for the desktop.
3. The rise of mobile devices for computing. This means a lot of software has been designed for the slower specs of the mobile devices, Extending the lifespan of the computer.
4. The Cloud, All the heavy processing is done off the computer and it has became a thin client.
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I would also contend that "Popular" is not the same as "Widely used"
1040 Tax forms (Score:5, Insightful)
These announcements that Windows (fill in the blank) is now the most popular OS is pretty much the same as announcing that the Form 1040 is now the most popular government form. Especially when it's compared to other Windows OSs.
When you can't buy a "Windows" computer with any other OS than 10, what do you expect?
What they are really saying is that Windows 7 computers have failed or been replace enough times that more now use the only OS you can buy for a "Windows" computer.
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And how many people got switched to W10 when they didn't want it? Now they are stuck with it. I for one am not going to switch my 5 computers to 10 anytime in the foreseeable future since I don't see anything but downsides. Prefer the greater control over Windows 7. My updates are turned off, and I only install them after they have been well vetted, and as I see the need, not when MS says so. MS hasn't done anything to 10 that makes me want to switch, but they have done lots of things to it that make me wan
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At work three of us just got the "you're the last ones" email from IT. We were asked to schedule a time for them to set up our new laptops running Windows 10. They were unamused when I technically met that request by choosing the last week in June.
I'm just not interested in this change over. Too much crap to reinstall, too much to reconfigure, and I have actual, useful shit to do. I just still can't get over how disruptive both the regularly scheduled updates as well as the distribution updates are on Windo
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MS does not seem to care at all about their customers, which shows just how much they think they have us by the throats, or some other body parts. MS is now assuming they can do just about anything, and everyone will just go along. The absurdly crappy patches, that are often more destructive than the supposed threats they are meant to block, make the entire Windows experience truly miserable now. I never remember patch Tuesdays as being disaster Tuesdays until the last couple of years, when they farmed out
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Yep. Thanks to family members who just blindly click "OK" whenever a dialog box pops up, we now have Windows 10 on two of our home computers. Worst part was when they didn't have drivers for one motherboard's built-in video hardware, so I had to go out and get a cheap video card just to get the machine back up and running. I've made it clear that the people who installed Windows 10 are now On Their Own as far as OS support goes.
Re: ATMs (Score:3)
I am surprised how long Windows 7 held on for
You're the only one.
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2. Windows 8/10 Tablet interface. I am sorry, the new interface still hasn't got me sold. I am using a PC with a keyboard and a mouse, I do not need big touch friendly displays, taking up real estate.
I agree with the other points you make, but the only Windows defaulting to a tablet interface (even on desktops) was Windows 8. Poor choice, I concur, but it was easily fixed with third party tools like Classic Shell -- and things went back to normal with 8.1 and 10 anyway.
With the Search icon (A Circle with a line attached) is next to the power off icon (A Semi Circle with a Line). Granted we never had an accident with this yet. It is just really bad location for it.
First, even if you hit the wrong (Power) button by mistake you still have to go through the menu with the the usual choices of Sleep, Hibernate, and so on; second, and more to the point, why not just press the Windows key instead? Focus s
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once of the very first things I do is disable Cortana. Not for privacy concerns, but because it still feels way too weird to talk to a computer...
Going through the "reset this computer" process to wipe a PC back to basics is really goddamn odd, since Cortana keeps speaking to you in a way too friendly and familiar manner. Not goddammit, you're not my friend, you're an OS and you should shut the hell up, I don't want my PC to talk to me or to be "friendly" with me. It's creepy as fuck.
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You forgot one critical aspect: Microsoft has done a fantastic job of making people not trust Windows 10.
Right from the beginning, Windows 10 has been sketchy with it's dubious forced upgrades. Then there's their data mining of everything on your machine, the forced upgrades.... the list just goes on and on. The upgrade one is particularly bad, because Microsoft routinely screws up their updates, so you have a decent chance of discovering that your computer has been bricked due to no fault of your own.
So
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I am not after seeing XP around forever. Lol
Shoot Vista came out XP wouldn't budge. 7 came out and STILL XP rocked for year after year all the way to freaking 2014 13 years later!
Worse people on slashdot and wired.com screamed YOU CAN TAKE XP off my COLD DEAD hands comments rated at +5 insightful. Good Lord people hate change so much supposedly on a technical website.
7 was a good OS so I couldn't understand why? But anyway I expect those resistant to change to wait again and repeat.
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The biggest reason is probably that Windows 7 is a really good, solid OS (especially post-SP1), and Win10 doesn't really offer anything new or revolutionary, at least not on the surface. The subscription licensing model is the biggest new change, and that's not really something that sells a new Windows version, nothing compared to going from Win3.11 to Win95 or Win98 to Win2000/XP, where serious and major improvements happened.
There is a lot of good stuff under the hood, like the changes to font rendering (
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True.
Which is why I'm not buying new computer hardware.
I won't do Windows 10, thank you.
When I'm forced off of Win7, it'll be Linux.
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I just love that headline, "Windows 10 is now the most popular operating system from 'Microsoft", hmm, interesting, note the exclusion, just from M$, no other companies OS's. So how is Windows 10 really performing for you M$. Obviously on the mobile phone it is totally shite, dead as dead can be. On servers, well, your screwed there to. Appliances, windows 10, yeah not so much. How about tablets and TVs, oh wow, again a complete blow out. So on rapidly losing market share 'desktops', M$ is winning, against
Another Trump Victory (Score:5, Funny)
Obama failed to make Windows 10 popular, but it was no problem for Trump! America is well on the way to greatness now!
#MAGA
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The Winter is gone
The Summer is here
for this we thank
our leader dear.
They couldn't even give it away and... (Score:1)
MS couldn't even give away Windows 10 and make it popular! It took all this time to finally catch up... and they still have a fairly captive customer base to begin with.
captcha:envelops
M$ = dishonest as usual (Score:2, Insightful)
I wonder how big the percentage if Windows 10 machines would be if Microsoft had actually NOT pushed the "upgrade" onto previous versions of Windows WHEN THE USER SPECIFICALLY DECLINED THE UPGRADE?!!?
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indeed the "windows update" on my machine has upgrade to 10 pending but I instead use a vb script to keep pulling windows 7 updates.
Wait to miss the point: Linux isn't being used! (Score:4, Insightful)
Way to miss the point. It doesn't matter if people are using Windows 7 or Windows 10. It doesn't matter how they got the version they're using. What matters is that they're still using some version of Windows! This also means that the vast majority of them aren't using Linux.
Despite the Windows Vista, Windows 8 and to some extent the Windows 10 debacles, Linux managed to make pretty much no inroads into the desktop/laptop market. In fact, many long-time Linux users have found Linux to actually have gotten worse over the past decade, with disasters like systemd, GNOME 3, PulseAudio, NetworkManager, Wayland and Firefox seriously harming the Linux desktop experience.
Although Linux has seen some success in server environments, we're starting to see more and more Linux installations being moved to OSes like FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, and even Windows Server. What's worse, many organizations and professionals are choosing these alternate OSes for new deployments.
We're also seeing Linux falter in the embedded space. Organizations and professionals are now starting to go with OSes like NetBSD and QNX for embedded environments.
What's most worrying for Linux is how well Google Fuchsia [slashdot.org] is coming along. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see it become a top-tier platform within the next 5 to 10 years, replacing Android on mobile devices, replacing Linux for at least some server use cases, and severely challenging Windows and macOS on desktops and laptops. Before you say "that's impossible!", keep in mind that we've just seen Google already do this with Chrome. They managed to replace IE and Firefox within a few years, and now Chrome dominates both the desktop and mobile platforms.
The future of Linux is looking extraordinarily bleak. The Linux community failed to capitalize on multiple releases of Windows that were widely disliked. Systemd has caused reliability problems that have caused many professionals to no longer consider Linux a suitable server or embedded OS. Now we're even seeing some of its most notable and powerful corporate supporters coming up with alternatives to Linux that would directly compete with Linux.
The worst part is that it didn't need to be this way. Linux had everything going for it by 2005. It was just about to break through on numerous fronts. And then it all collapsed so spectacularly!
Re: Wait to miss the point: Linux isn't being used (Score:2, Interesting)
The big problem with FOSS is everyone wants to be a chief. Everyone wants to do their project exactly their way and only that way, and so we wind up with lots of poorly-supported projects and only a few great ones.
Developers may be able to collaborate on reviewing and writing code; they're terrible at collaborating on project management. What the FOSS movement really needs is MANAGEMENT in order to compete with the big players.
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If that happens, I will change over from 7.
Re:Wait to miss the point: Linux isn't being used! (Score:4, Interesting)
Nor can Linux do photo manipulation with the software out there. Sure, Gimp can be used to a limited extent, but for real work you need Photoshop or Capture One Pro.
Then there are the other photo software, such as stacking for macro, which runs on either Windows or Mac, but not any version of Linux.
If you do any serious photo work you're stuck with either the overpriced, underperformance, non-upgradable Macs, or the reasonably priced but invasive Windows.
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So first you accuse the parent of being factually wrong, and then proceed to point to an *emulator*.
And if that wasn't bad enough, lets look at the compatibility reports provided by Wine:
https://appdb.winehq.org/objec... [winehq.org]
Out of all the various versions of Photoshop, only *two* are marked as Platinum. The last one being CS5 from 2010. Everything else is less, which means everything else is problematic to a varying degree.
And this doesn't even consider the OTHER key aspects of Photoshop usage, such as using
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Systemd is a fantastic example of why Linux hasn't taken off, and it's exactly for not the reasons you mention.
Look at the massive shitstorm that Systemd has caused. Now consider how much impact that actually has on the average user. How much? A big fat goose egg. That's how much.
But the linux community et al care more about fighting over bullshit and being special snowflakes than actually putting out products that would be valuable for people.
Hell, the fact that there are to this day, religious wars be
most currently used != most popular (Score:4, Insightful)
see the title.
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Despite what a few people on Slashdot think nearly all users don't give a shit what OS they run.
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Yup. They may have noticed that their computers worked better with 7, though.
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Then they would be approaching the subject subjectively since all benchmarks show performance improvements on Windows 10 to say nothing of the vastly improved security features of the OS.
Despite what people heap on it for the fisher price interface, the tracking, and Edge, under the hood it is a pretty damn impressive improvement.
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How can I get in on this Windows 10 that doesn't slow or hang whenever it feels like it? My TRS-80, approximately a million times less powerful, felt more responsive.
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Popular? (Score:2)
More like Populous. Language, it's subtle but important.
That is like saying that auto insurance is "popular". It has the connotation that it means "well liked". Rather than "forced to use". When simply the title should imply the simply empirical definition of most numerous...
I don't think you know the meaning of that word (Score:5, Insightful)
"Popular" means that people WANT something. Not that they're basically forced to do it. Independent of the frequency an activity is done. Else you could say that working is a lot more popular than fucking.
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Before you make some claim about that you need to prove that people actually give a shit. Most people couldn't care less what OS they have providing it doesn't bog down the system or crash every few minutes like Vista did, or doesn't completely confound them ala Windows 8.
When no one cares then popular = market share.
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Something being "popular" still requires that people are not pressed into using it or at least have a choice. Saying Win10 is popular is like saying that the SED of the GDR was a popular party because, yes, there were others (the so called "Blockparteien") but they played no role and you didn't really have a choice, but the SED routinely got 96-99% of the votes, so it must have been insanely popular.
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Something being "popular" still requires that people are not pressed into using it or at least have a choice.
But people do have a choice, and that's why the term "popular" is still perfectly valid. They could have rolled back, they could have downloaded a Windows 7 ISO and installed it, they could have switched to Linux abandoning the platform all together.
Popular is still the correct term here.
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Often you don't really have the choice because you're dependent on a piece of software that isn't readily available on other platforms.
Not to mention that most people using Win10 probably don't really care what OS they use. It's less a conscious decision but more one of a lack of information.
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Often you don't really have the choice because you're dependent on a piece of software that isn't readily available on other platforms.
Office 2019 hasn't been released yet. For everything else there's no program that would push people towards Windows 10 from Windows 7 or 8.1
Not to mention that most people using Win10 probably don't really care what OS they use.
Exactly my point. When people don't care then popularity is dictated by numbers none the less.
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Office 2019 hasn't been released yet. For everything else there's no program that would push people towards Windows 10 from Windows 7 or 8.1
Games would come to mind. The new versions of DirectX will only be released for the most recent version of Windows (or, rather, they will deliberately be crippled to not be compatible with older versions). Until now, game studios were wary to cut off more than half of their potential customer base, but with growing acceptance of Win10 you will eventually see games surface that make use of the new DX features and that will hence only be available for people running Win10 (or at the very least will only run w
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So... when I want a hooker and get syphilis, it means syphilis is popular?
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If that were even remotely true, then syphilis wouldn't be a thing.
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I would, but my mail-order bride ran away when I took off her ankle chain because she wanted to show me some Kama-Sutra move.
Flogging is the most popular corporal punishment (Score:5, Insightful)
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The beatings^Wbroken updates will continue until morale improves.
"Popular" (Score:5, Insightful)
You keep using that word, but I do not think it means what you think it means.
By Microsoft's definition, Kim Yong-Un is popular too.
Windows 8.1 ... (Score:4, Interesting)
You can have my Windows 8.1 with Classic Shell when you stop assuming I want a fucking interface like a tablet when I have a multi-monitor system, take out your bullshit telemetry, and let me decide when I'll apply patches and reboot.
Until then, Windows 10 can kiss my ass.
My next Windows box will be purely a VM on a Linux machine.
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As someone whose small businesses really did drop Windows as a result of the Windows 10 mess (we hoarded Windows 7 boxes just before the deadline, and use other platforms since), it's not necessarily a tough shift to make these days.
Sure, if you are a big organisation heavily reliant on Windows servers and Microsoft's back office software, or if you really do need to run professional applications that are only available on Windows, you're stuck with it. However, many of those people will be running Enterpri
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Fascinating that you prefer butchering Windows 8.1 over Windows 10 which has nothing tablety about it ... unless you're stupid enough to enable the tablet options ... which most people don't even do on their tablets.
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Start Menu Workflow (Score:2)
Even in desktop mode, the start menu for Windows 10 is significantly different than that of Windows XP or 7.
Unless your criteria is essentially zero change then the start menu works in a familiar manner in Windows 10 from Windows 7 or even XP. No it's not identical but it's not wildly different and the changes they've made actually pretty ok in my opinion. It wasn't a hard transition and at this point I actually kind of prefer it. I certainly could pick some nits but nothing that makes me scream with frustration like Windows 8 did.
If you do not like the new start menu, Classic Shell is still a must.
Fair enough. To each their own but I've done both. I used Classic Shell and on
forced upgrades (Score:2)
Looks like all of those forced upgrades to Windows 10 [computerworld.com] finally paid off for Microsoft!
What might have happened prior to January? (Score:1)
Oh, right, gift-giving season. And since no one can buy new copies of Windows 7, all those devices were running 10. So this is attrition, not adoption.
windows 10 is shit. (Score:4, Interesting)
If MS doesn't reverse course as far as making locked down, consumer unfriendly, annoying, intrusive, and just plain awful OS's; Windows 10 might be the start of their decline.
Vista might have been terrible, but they took the experience from that, and made windows 7. Windows 8 and the metro clusterfuck was also bad, but 8.1 solved a lot of those complaints.
10 is bad in a totally different way -- removing user choice and incessant spying. I don't see MS learning their lesson from this. Instead I see them doubling down on these efforts.
Right now there's only really two compelling reasons to stick with windows -- office and gaming.
It's a pretty precarious situation to be in. Sure enterprise will continue to buy windows PC's, but with hardware having been 'good enough' for office drone productivity going on a decade now; how many seats will that really sell per year? (and how frequently does that hardware even need to be refreshed?)
As for games, that's a pretty niche market already. But a few AAA titles being fully released and supported on linux and/or mac might tip the balance a bit. (Or maybe if valve was more aggressive at pushing steamOS on developers?)
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If MS doesn't reverse course as far as making locked down, consumer unfriendly, annoying, intrusive, and just plain awful OS's; Windows 10 might be the start of their decline.
Or more based in reality, people on the whole don't give a shit. But while we're talking about it:
Locked down : It isn't any more locked down than Windows 7.
Consumer unfriendly : In what way? -1 points for bitching about Windows updates.
Annoying : I assume you're one of the people who can't change 2 settings in the Settings app that causes the entire OS to shut up?
Intrusive : Yeah most users will complain about telemetry by asking Google to post their complaint to their Facebook account. What matters to Sla
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10 is bad in a totally different way -- removing user choice...
What do you want to do in Win10 that you cannot do?
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decide when and how to reboot my computer with updates (spending the money on a pro version is not a valid solution here)
have services/features stay disabled (skydrive, cortana)
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Windows update will re-enable any services or registry settings that disabled telemetry.
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Having to pour through settings and read articles so your computer performs (you hope) in a reasonable manner is not 'easy'
Easy would be having the machine setup to function and operate with no shenanigans right out of the box.
MS' "best version of windows" poll (Score:3)
1. Windows 10 is the best!
2. Windows 7 is actually the best - (This option will upgrade you to windows 10 immediately or later when you click "cancel upgrade to windows 10")
3. I use Linux - (This option never appears because this is a windows poll & windows 10 is the best)
4. I use android - (Another invalid option + there's a mobile windows thing so this does not count either)
5. I HATE WINDOWS 10! - (OEMs include it in everything + we actively ruin the OS experience of previous generations so you actually love it & will upgrade.)
At Microsoft we value our users and make real changes based on your feedback.
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Last I talked to someone who worked on Macintosh software for Microsoft, he told me that, whenever they bashed Apple publicly, they'd always assure my friend and cow-orkers that Microsoft liked what they were doing because it made money. Microsoft likes Mac users, because they frequently buy Microsoft software.
In other news . . . (Score:1)
Bound to happen (Score:1)
IE on the other hand ... (Score:3)
Citation Provided [w3schools.com]
Re:IE on the other hand ... (Score:5, Insightful)
True, Chrome has its share of vulnerabilities today. But is it as bad as IE was in its hay days, despite attackers being a lot more sophisticated now? Despite the core of Chrome has disclosed the source code through the Chromium project?
Leaving anecdotal evidence aside, if you take a global big picture two things are clear. 1. Microsoft code has a lot more vulnerabilities than others. 2. Open source projects with lots of following are more secure than proprietary software.
Re:IE on the other hand ... (Score:4, Informative)
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They know so much about such a large population, if they know nothing about you, you stand out. The nail that sticks out gets hammered. The only hope is in being careful and try to hide the tree in a forest.
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But is it as bad as IE was in its hay days
Is anything? At the dawn of the internet we basically invented new and wonderful ways to exploit things creators thought were secure on a daily basis. If you are going to compare Chrome to something you need to compare it to IE11.
Windows 7 as long as we can (Score:2)
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The problem is that you're hardware choices will become more and more limited. For example, Microsoft has gone so far as to cripple windows updates for any non-win10 computer running a kaby lake or newer processor.
OS Share overall (Score:4, Interesting)
Comsidering how electionions run in the US... (Score:2)
- If a city has Windows 10 on over 50% of the computer, when they are all considered to be Windows 10 computers.
- Super statisticals: people whose computer usage count as 10,000 users, they're specifically chosen by the company paying for the survey.
Popular in this context is sort of like a "belief" system... just like religion.
- most people believe in "their religion" because that's what their parents/culture brought them up to do
- most
M$ Article? M$ BAD! (Score:2)
more like matching win7 marketshare (Score:3)
it has taken a free OS upgrade more than 2 years to match win7 marketshare. hmm..
I wouldn't call it popular... (Score:5, Insightful)
If Windows 7 was still available for purchase, and didn't try to auto-upgrade itself to windows 10, I'm sure Windows 7 would still be winning.
Choice of words (Score:2)
The claim of popularity reminds me of an old Howard the Duck cartoon.
Dr. Angst, Master of Mundane Mysticism: Admit it, duck! You're outclassed!
Howard, thinking: Expertise I'll concede him, but class - NEVER!
Popularity (Score:2)
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Marshmallow the most popular OS from Google! (Score:2)
In other news...
https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
Putting the right spin on it (Score:2)
Roughly 100% of the population has either died or is in line to die, so it is by far the most popular thing the human race has ever discovered! Even more popular than Windows 10!
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Only about 93% of all humans have died yet, so it's not quite time to call it statistically significant.
They're forcing 'em (Score:2)
Notice how Windows 10 adoption slowed down significantly about July 2016, when the forced (sorry, "free") upgrade period ended.
And as for the trend in Q3 last year - how easy is it to even buy a new computer with Windows 7 now?
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If you want a toy that has bright shiny lights, makes little soothing noises, go windows
You want a professional machine? Use linux.
This is oversimplification. I like car analogies, so here is one:
Windows is a self-driving car that is powered by your blood. It will save you from yourself, even if you insist on driving off the cliff. It runs on its own, but can easily suck you dry.
Linux is a nuclear-powered steam machine. Powerful, but requires you to know what manual levers to pull and push to maintain steam. Hard to get going too, as you need to build up steam. If you don't know what you are doing, boiler explodes and takes you with
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This would be true circa 1995, modern linux is about as user friendly as you could imagine.
I don't have to imagine. Few years back, after getting tired of cleaning out crap from my mother's computer I tried to move her to Ubuntu. She just couldn't work with it, despite me spending couple hours training her how to do simple tasks like browsing, watching DVDs, joining wireless network. When Win10 came out she with minimal pains migrated to it (touchscreen helped).
There is a reason why the year of Linux desktop never arrives. This reason is that no matter what distro you use, it always been by tec
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Agreed. I've been using Linux off and on since I installed Slackware from a mountain of floppy disks.
There's always pinch-points where it's close, or things mostly work. It's just different enough to leave you hunting, and just incomplete enough to leave you frustrated.
Don't get me wrong, it's an awesome OS and useful for many
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I'm running Windows 10 on my personal machine after twenty years of running Linux exclusively as my desktop? Why?
Because the "amazing" hardware support doesn't include gracefully handling multi-GPU configurations (the only way to get Wayland to start is to blacklist the Radeon driver).
Because the "amazing" hardware support doesn't include out of the box support for high density displays without manually configuring each toolkit and many applications manually.
Because the "amazing" hardware support still can
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Bull-hockey. One of those choices doesn't need to be configured not to spy on you and feed you ads. The other one does.
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One does wonder what the install base for Windows 10 would be without the upgrade giveaway/push? I'm guessing a lot fewer desktops would have Windows 10 had they not done that..