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Windows Microsoft Operating Systems

Windows 11 Runs on Fewer Than 1 in 6 PCs (theregister.com) 265

Much of the Windows world has yet to adopt Microsoft's latest desktop operating system more than a year after it launched, according to figures for October collated by Statcounter. From a report: Just 15.44 percent of PCs across the globe have installed Windows 11, meaning it gained 1.83 percentage points in a month. This compares to the 71.29 percent running Windows 10, which fell marginally from 71.88 percent in September. Windows 7 is still hanging on with a tenuous grip, in third place with 9.61 percent, Windows 8.1 in fourth with 2.45 percent, plain old Windows 8 with 0.69 percent, and bless its heart, Windows XP with 0.39 percent because of your extended family. In total, Windows has almost 76 percent of the global desktop OS market followed by OS X with 15.7 percent and Linux with 2.6 percent. Android comprised 42.37 percent of total operating system market share, with Windows trailing on 30.11 percent, iOS on 17.6 percent, OS X on 6.24 percent, and Linux on 1.04 percent.
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Windows 11 Runs on Fewer Than 1 in 6 PCs

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  • by sdinfoserv ( 1793266 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @01:44PM (#63019611)
    I'll move to what's next. Giving Win11 the Win8 & ME treatment.
    • TPM is a huge reason
      When you require hardware signatures to save *subscription* operating systems from piracy, you're doing something wrong.

    • by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @03:46PM (#63020079)

      At least for me, it's not a "skip edition", in that it doesn't perform badly like Vista or whose UI took a massive usability hit like Windows 8. It's just that there's no real reason I can see to get Windows 11 unless you're buying a new PC like I did, or are unusually sensitive to some minor changes in the UI. Between that and the hardware requirements which excludes a lot of relatively modern PCs, there's no real surprise it's got fairly modest adoption numbers. But it'll slowly gobble up more and more marketshare over the next few years, like most Windows OSes do. Well except for Windows 8, which many people tried and immediately reinstalled Windows 7, or just avoided altogether..

      Also, although MS gets disparaged for this, I consider it a very positive thing that there aren't any radical changes in 11. The last radical UI change was Windows 8, which was absolutely atrocious to use for traditional desktops without a touchscreen. I got used to 11 in fairly short order, and it feels pretty comfortable now.

  • Windows 11 runs on 0/11 PC's here

    --
    Statistics are no substitute for judgment. - Henry Clay

    • My Windows 10 system (the only computer I have with MS's malware and only used for one thing... video editing) keeps threatening to up upgrade itself to Windows 11 on a regular basis. Fortunately I've caught it just in time but I have friends who've left their PC on (with unsaved data), only to come back and find that the system as updated itself without expressed permission -- and they've lost their unsaved work in the process.

      I know that I have had my Windows system "update and restart" while in the midd

      • My Windows 10 system (the only computer I have with MS's malware and only used for one thing... video editing) keeps threatening to up upgrade itself to Windows 11 on a regular basis. Fortunately I've caught it just in time but I have friends who've left their PC on (with unsaved data), only to come back and find that the system as updated itself without expressed permission -- and they've lost their unsaved work in the process.

        I know that I have had my Windows system "update and restart" while in the middle of an unattended total system backup as well. Who the hell writes an OS that will interrupt a mission-critcal task such as a backup to update and reboot itself?????

        While I agree that this is really terrible, shitty behavior that shouldn't exist, you *CAN* prevent it from happening, and it is not terribly difficult. If I can figure it out, anyone can.

        • While I agree that this is really terrible, shitty behavior that shouldn't exist, you *CAN* prevent it from happening, and it is not terribly difficult. If I can figure it out, anyone can

          Nope. I've tried all the registry hacks and things I can find online to disable the feature-updates and version-updates but nothing works for long. When a security update comes along it seems to reset those registry entries and bingo... it starts doing its own thing automatically again.

          It's like playing whackamole.

        • The problem is that you can only stop it from happening for a brief moment. I had 10 PRO on a workstation, turned off all the automated shit, and somehow, miraculously, it kept getting turned back on seemingly at random. Seems the only way to TRULY lock it down is to keep it off the network entirely, which is really shitty for a workstation in 2022.

          I've found 11 isn't that much different from 10 other than the "change for the sake of change" UI updates. Well, that's after turning off S mode, upgrading to PR

        • I don't even mind if Windows downloads the updates and installs them. They usually don't break anything so I leave automatic updates turned on. However, the one thing that I find completely abhorrent and inexcusible is to shut down or reboot my system without my explicit command. Microsoft seems to have drawn a line in the sand here. They will allow you to "delay" updates, or to "schedule a time for maintenance", but you cannot tell Windows "my system is doing something important and you must not interr
      • Just disable the TPM functionality in the EFI settings. But make sure you apply all firmware updates first in case one of those flips the setting. Then you are "ineligible" for Windows 11 and you won't have to worry about an update.

      • Who the hell writes an OS that will interrupt a mission-critcal task such as a backup to update and reboot itself?????

        Someone who suspects that the OS they wrote is so insecure that, if left unpatched for long enough to complete a backup, it might be taken over by black hats.

        And this 37 years after it was released, and 29 years after it was relaunched with a cosmetic user interface on top of a clone of VMS - a proper OS.

      • I got the Pro version and it doens't do that, you can delay your updates for quite some time. I got Windows 8 pro for $14.95, then upgraded eventually to Windows 10 (so that I could support my mother's computer over the phone I needed to have something similar in style to where she says "the blob in the corner" I would understand what she meant). Last month I upgraded to Widnows 11 on a new computer, because Windows 11 is what came with it (building my own from scratch it painful and more expensive). The

    • Windows 11 runs on 0/11 PC's here

      Same. While I'm not sure about the benefit of "upgrading" from Windows 10 to 11, I'd be willing to do so, but none of my PCs meet the hardware "requirements" Microsoft has (arbitrarily) imposed. All my systems are too old CPU-wise and don't have TPMs so I can't put a supported install of Windows 11 on either of my 2 physical Windows systems or the VM on my Linux system.

      From what I've read, they *could* run Windows 11, but they wouldn't receive updates, etc... so what's the point? I'm not spending $$$

      • It's not so much the age of the cpu but the tpm support. I have one of the few laptop sku's in my processor generation which didn't include tpm, so while it outperforms almost all the others It's not eligible for win 11.
        • It's not so much the age of the cpu but the tpm support. I have one of the few laptop sku's in my processor generation which didn't include tpm, so while it outperforms almost all the others It's not eligible for win 11.

          Thanks. I was a little overly general. My Dell T110 -- with a Xeon X3470 and 32GB ECC RAM, running Ubuntu 18.04 -- actually has a TPM but it's version 1.2. Windows 11 "requires" TPM 2.0 or higher.

  • by GotNoRice ( 7207988 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @01:53PM (#63019623)
    It was never intended that every computer be upgraded to Windows 11. Microsoft made sure of that themselves with the strict requirements, and it's also why Windows 10 is still being supported for several more years. How many Android phones run the latest version of Android? How many IPhones run the latest version of iOS? How many Macs run the latest version of MacOS? I wouldn't be surprised it it's 1/6 or less in those cases also.
    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by supremebob ( 574732 )

      For the iPhone, I'd imagine that most of the ones still in use are running iOS 15 or 16 right now. iOS 16 offers backward compatibility all the way back to the iPhone 8, and iOS 15 offers support for the iPhone 6S or newer.

      • by dmay34 ( 6770232 )

        Most iDevices are running "iOS 16". Meaning, sure, if you go to your "about this phone" it will say "iOS 16", but the newest features of iOS 16 aren't being ported to older phones.

        Frankly, that's okay. There really hasn't been all that much developed in phone OS's in the past 5 years anyway that is really a new killer feature. All the significant advances have been on the hardware side.

        • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          Most iDevices are running "iOS 16". Meaning, sure, if you go to your "about this phone" it will say "iOS 16", but the newest features of iOS 16 aren't being ported to older phones.

          Frankly, that's okay. There really hasn't been all that much developed in phone OS's in the past 5 years anyway that is really a new killer feature. All the significant advances have been on the hardware side.

          Well, you also don't want all those features clogging your phone and making it slow. There have been numerous lawsuits wher

    • Wow! I didn't know several now just mean 2. Cause that is all it has left. The support is done in 2025.
    • by btroy ( 4122663 )
      I agree. I have it on a new machine, linux on my older/weaker machines, and Win 10 on another.

      It works good, but uses more RAM. Honestly, a pretty nice version from my perspective.
    • fully in to where you don't own or control anything, and they want your computer to be a phone - i.e. a completely walled garden from which they can extract rent, like Apple. Way to inadvertently point out the main issue.

    • Right, but Microsoft no doubt also intended that people would buy new computers that could run it, so they could sell them a new version of Windows. This is of course not happening, because of the stupid economy.

    • With Windows 7 it was partially true too, but they pre-installed Widnows 7 on a ton of cheap PCs that really were too small for it and didn't meet the minimum requirements. It was getting a bad name for awhile because of that, with defenders of Windows XP claiming they'd never upgrade...

  • Unsupported CPU (Score:2, Interesting)

    I have a laptop that has been out of warranty for about a year with a Ryzen 2200u and it is not supported by the OS.

  • I just got a new laptop with Windows 11, and it's honestly no worse to use than Windows 10. Most of the same application and desktop shortcuts that worked in Windows 10 still work.

    Yes, the constant advertising for things like OneDrive, Edge, and Office 365 are annoying. That said, most of that same garbage was backported to Windows 10 in the most recent feature updates.

    • by SirSlud ( 67381 )

      yeah it's totally fine

      • "I am constantly getting kicked in the dick, but I am doing what needs to be done so it is ok"
        • by SirSlud ( 67381 )

          im a c++ programmer. I spend lots of time in terminals, in debuggers, etc.

          but you wierdos are fucking dramatic. windows 11 is fine. it does not kick you in the dick unless you have such a hardon for any vendor hate such that you find ways of making it kick you in the dick. or to put it another way, I love Linux and use it a lot, and it also kicks me in the dick all the time. There isn't an OS on the planet that doesn't

          • by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @04:57PM (#63020273) Homepage Journal

            To me the big frustration with Windows is that as an interface it peaked in 7 just before they killed desktop gadgets for security reasons, and ever since then they've made performance improvements yes, but the UI has only gotten worse. If they could just not ruin things, that would be great. This doesn't make Microsoft unique, everything but KDE seems to have gotten worse or at best stagnated. Sometimes stagnant is what you want, but I can't remember ever wanting a UI to go to crap.

  • Iâ(TM)ve told Microsoft multiple times to add my % to their list.
    • Iâ(TM)ve told Microsoft multiple times to add my % to their list.

      Apparently I& you're #226 using to post this % message. :-)

    • So Windows 3.1 is what's inserting the ’ in UTF-8 in your post? Maybe Microsoft can't hear you because your message was sent from your iPhone.

  • Anyways

  • And it should have been.

    MS should have just called Windows 11 "Windows" and not pretended it was all that big of an update. Then everyone would have installed it.

    • And it should have been.

      MS should have just called Windows 11 "Windows" and not pretended it was all that big of an update. Then everyone would have installed it.

      I think it's more a case of people *can't* install Windows 11 because their current PCs don't meet the arbitrary and, apparently, unnecessary hardware requirements -- like latest CPU and TPM 2.0. (I have 5 PCs and only the Dell T110 has a TPM and it's version 1.2 -- and that system has a Xeon CPU and 32GB of ECC RAM. It's running Linux though -- really well, I might add.)

      Technically, it seems that most older PCs could run Windows 11, with a few hacks to bypass the install checks, but MS won't support the

      • by DesScorp ( 410532 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @02:51PM (#63019827) Journal

        And it should have been.

        MS should have just called Windows 11 "Windows" and not pretended it was all that big of an update. Then everyone would have installed it.

        I think it's more a case of people *can't* install Windows 11 because their current PCs don't meet the arbitrary and, apparently, unnecessary hardware requirements -- like latest CPU and TPM 2.0. (I have 5 PCs and only the Dell T110 has a TPM and it's version 1.2 -- and that system has a Xeon CPU and 32GB of ECC RAM. It's running Linux though -- really well, I might add.)

        Technically, it seems that most older PCs could run Windows 11, with a few hacks to bypass the install checks, but MS won't support them with updates, etc... So the only way to "upgrade" would be to spend $$$ on a new(er) system. I know I'm not doing that.

        I suspect MS set the upgrade requirements at the behest of OEMs, who howled angrily when MS basically decided to give Win10 away for free, thus bypassing the new hardware upgrade cycle for much of the non-business public. I suspect most people that had been running Windows 7 found that 10 ran just fine on their current machines and had no desire to spend money on a new computer, when their current one ran as they liked and had Microsoft's latest and greatest for free. I'd be willing to bet money that you'll never again see MS issue a new OS that will run on PC's up to 10 years old the way Win10 did, and that MS will continue to set arbitrary limits on what hardware can be upgraded. Future Windows will be "free upgrades" only if your hardware is less than 2 years old or so.

        • Good points. I hadn't considered the hardware OEM angle, but make sense.

          I'd be willing to bet money that you'll never again see MS issue a new OS that will run on PC's up to 10 years old the way Win10 did, and that MS will continue to set arbitrary limits on what hardware can be upgraded. Future Windows will be "free upgrades" only if your hardware is less than 2 years old or so.

          Well, I won't see that 'cause I'm betting all my systems going forward will be running Linux or BSD ... :-)

      • by dmay34 ( 6770232 )

        Personally, I would rather a computer or phone just NOT update at all (except security updates of course). Just build the best system you can with all the features it's gonna have and sell that thing. Apple kind of broke that with iOS by pushing the update for free to every phone existing iPhone. This was super cool the first time it happened on my iPhone 3G, then the second time they did that their update bricked the phone. I switched to Android after that.

      • Yes, you could install Win11 on an old clunker but it will be unusably slow.
        • Yes, you could install Win11 on an old clunker but it will be unusably slow.

          They all run Windows 10 acceptably for what I do, general personal and light business applications --- browsing, email, editing (document, spreadsheets, cards and images w/GIMP), etc... I'm not a gamer. Would Windows 11 really impose that much more on the HW?

      • Almost everything about your post is wrong. The requirements aren't arbitrary, they are all related to security. It's sort of a no-win scenario for MS. If they don't enable strict security requirements, they get bashed for not being secure. When they do enable strict security requirements, they get bashed when less secure systems are no longer supported. The older CPUs are not supported because they have vulnerabilities that require workarounds. TPM, etc, enabled additional security features also. Fo
        • by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @04:01PM (#63020137)

          The rumor about unsupported systems not receiving updates was based on an unsubstantiated click-bait article from almost a year ago. Unfortunately, people like you who have probably never even tried running Win11 on an unsupported system decided to take it as gospel since it aligned with your anti-windows bias.

          It's actually based on articles from Microsoft, like Installing Windows 11 on devices that don't meet minimum system requirements [microsoft.com]:

          Devices that do not meet these system requirements will no longer be guaranteed to receive updates, including but not limited to security updates.

          The following disclaimer applies if you install Windows 11 on a device that doesn't meet the minimum system requirements:

          This PC doesn't meet the minimum system requirements for running Windows 11 - these requirements help ensure a more reliable and higher quality experience. Installing Windows 11 on this PC is not recommended and may result in compatibility issues. If you proceed with installing Windows 11, your PC will no longer be supported and won't be entitled to receive updates. Damages to your PC due to lack of compatibility aren't covered under the manufacturer warranty.

          So, you're wrong. You might be getting updates now, but that's not a given going forward.

          Many other articles note that Microsoft says you *can* install Windows 11 on non-compliant hardware (as I noted), but those systems will be not be officially supported.

  • by phozz bare ( 720522 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @02:03PM (#63019661)

    In my opinion the taskbar is the single most important element of the desktop user experience. I'm not going to repeat my rant from 9 months ago on why I think Win11 cemented its status as a useless screen real estate hog (you can read it at https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org] ).
    As far as I can see none of these issues have been addressed in any recent update, so it looks like I'm sticking with Win10 for as long as possible.

    • " so it looks like I'm sticking with Win10 for as long as possible"

      Resistance is futile, prepare to be assimilated!

    • I absolutely agree, and so would most technical people. But that doesn't account for the other 4.9 out of the 5 out of 6 PCs that don't run Windows 11.

      Most people don't make active decisions on the usability of their OS. They get an update, whine for 30 seconds that the task bar is centered and move on without ever realising what they are missing. Remember Microsoft have the telemetry. They pushed a taskbar out lacking features because telemetry told them that most people don't actually use features.

      Yeah Wi

    • so it looks like I'm sticking with Win10 for as long as possible.

      Have you started planning your move away from Windows entirely?

    • What do you mean? I love that there's hidden registry hacks for resetting the size of the taskbar to something reasonable...

      ...that then makes the clock half-unreadable because it cuts of the bottom line with the date.

      NAILED IT! TOTALLY NAILED IT!

  • Apparently not just for politics anymore.

  • Nevermind that Android is Linux. Linux is on most home routers and lots of IoT-devices, IP cameras, etc. And I'm supposed to believe that people have 30 times as many Windows PCs?

    • Routers (networking), cameras (AV), and IoT thingies (mostly trash and/or toys) are not PCs.
    • It's clearly stated that they're discussing desktop operating systems.

      • Android is the leading desktop OS? Please explain this excerpt: "Windows has almost 76 percent of the global desktop OS market [...] Android comprised 42.37 percent of total operating system market share". Notice that one is "global desktop OS market" and the other is "total operating system market". What they probably mean though is operating systems which are used to browse the web, specifically web sites which collect user agent data for them, or "desktop and mobile". Large parts of the internet run on L

  • We have several pretty decent laptops and desktops in our house running 10, oddly the 11 update tool tells us our machines can't be updated -- so, there you go, I'm not going to battle with it. 10 is fine for us anyway, so thanks MS.

  • In the past when upgrades didn't require an insanely recent minimum system configuration the numbers of PC running an OS actually reflected whether people wanted to use the OS. Nowadays it more reflects that no one would buy a new PC just for an OS upgrade.

    I frankly don't care about Windows 11 vs 10. Yeah taskbar is shit, but otherwise it's just fine. I upgraded the PCs that could run it in the house. All one of them. Funny enough, we have 6 PCs in the house.

  • A lot of people need to buy a new computer to get Windows 11. Why would they if their current computer still functions perfectly?

    Microsoft should be more considerate towards older hardware.

  • ...then it would probably have larger take-up.

    But no, MS decided my Dell XPS 9560 with 32Gb RAM can't run it. No, not because I don't have a TPM - I do - but because the CPU, for some reason that has never been adequately explained, isn't supported. It's more than adequate to run Win11 well, but for some reason they decided that no, they wouldn't support it.
    And sure, I can force-install anyway, but then I gotta worry about not getting updates? Not an option.

    Nobody is complaining about RAM require

    • ...then it would probably have larger take-up.

      But no, MS decided my Dell XPS 9560 with 32Gb RAM can't run it. No, not because I don't have a TPM - I do - but because the CPU, for some reason that has never been adequately explained, isn't supported. It's more than adequate to run Win11 well, but for some reason they decided that no, they wouldn't support it.

      Same. I have 5 old PCs, 2 currently running Windows 10 just fine and 2 running Ubuntu 18.04 fine, one with a Windows 10 VM that runs fine. None meet the hardware requirements for Windows 11 -- not even the Dell T110 with Xeon X3470 and 32 GB ECC RAM or ASRock Z77 system with i7-3770 and 32 GB RAM -- both currently running Linux. The 2 Windows 10 systems are a Dell XPS 420 and Inspiron 530. Ya, they're all *really* old, but all work well and run things fine for what I need. (I inherited them from friends

    • by ndykman ( 659315 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @10:13PM (#63020899)

      The reason for the CPU restrictions is the Windows 11 core isolation feature, which uses hypervisor features to protect the memory of key processes.

      This feature relies on mode-based execution control hardware features to provide acceptable performance. While there is a software-based fallback, the overall hit on performance can so bad that they didn't officially support CPUs that don't support MBEC and related virtualization features.

      Of course, there was a workaround for upgrading Win10 on unsupported machines, but they made it clear that it was for power users only as the performance hit could be major.

  • I have no idea what any version of Windows since 7 is like apart from having to use a few basic functions at various jobs that'd be hard to f**ck up (but yeah, somehow they've managed to). Life is blissfully simple, quick, streamline, & ad-free with Linux these days.
  • Every major version of Windows has a constituency that drives it's reason for being. In most years new PC OEMs are pushing Microsoft to issue a new Windows as a way to push new PCs and create the impression their old one is obsolete. Win 10 was a bit of an exception as Microsoft worked to try to make as much old hardware viable so gather up that huge existing Win 7 (and smaller Win 8.x) install base by making upgrades doable and giving better perf than those old OSes. And Microsoft was still trying conver

  • You don't stress about keeping people using Windows.
  • > Android comprised 42.37 percent of total operating system market share, with Windows trailing on 30.11 percent, iOS on 17.6 percent, OS X on 6.24 percent, and Linux on 1.04 percent.

    So basically LINUX has 44.10 percent of the total OS share :)

  • In one year since release, Windows 11 has seen it's market share become 5 times greater than linux has managed to achieve. Frankly, almost 16% of the market seems pretty good, since there are tons of organizations comprising vast numbers of PCs that are not yet ready to make the jump.

  • I just set up Windows 10 on an old Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 PC for my disabled uncle. It's a 15-year-old machine at this point, but it still runs everything fine and does what he needs, which is mainly paying bills online. There's absolutely no reason for this artificial obsolescence, but if I have to teach my uncle how to use Linux Mint then so be it.
    • Use a bypass to install Windows 11 then... I've got Windows 11 running even on single-core 64-bit Pentium 4 computers. And yes, they all receive windows updates exactly like supported systems do.
  • When Windows 10 reaches "end of support" and people have to throw out their computers because Windows 11 isn't compatible. The same is happening right now with Windows 7 and 8 and both Mozilla and Google are encouraging it by not letting their web browsers run on Windows 7/8 after 2023. If you thought the current chip shortage is bad, just wait until hundreds of millions of new computers are needed because of Windows 11.
    • I can't wait either, an event like that is often where I get my PCs. I got a Gateway dual athlon 64 running Vista for $25 a while back, for example. It ran Linux nicely.

    • Why would someone throw out their computer instead of using a simple bypass to install Windows 11?
  • So it's less than 20% chance that you become the victim of the same drive-by infection that turned Win7 machines into Win10 machines.

  • I upgraded an old laptop from 7 to 10 recently. It's actually pretty nice...bootup is significantly faster, and it has support for modern features that W7 simply lacks. One example is emojis...I don't use them but many people do, and I would rather see them than unicode character squares. The support for SSD's is nice as well.

    The telemetry stuff isn't that bad and is well understood and easily disabled at this point. Installing openshell, turning off a ton of shit and just in general configuring it only too

C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas l'Informatique. -- Bosquet [on seeing the IBM 4341]

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