Despite Microsoft’s push to get customers onto Windows 11, growth in the market share of the software giant’s latest operating system has stalled, while Windows 10 has made modest gains, according to fresh figures from Statcounter.
This is not the news Microsoft wanted to hear. After half a year of growth, the line for Windows 11 global desktop market share has taken a slight downturn, according to the website usage monitor, going from 35.6 percent in October to 34.9 percent in November. Windows 10, on the other hand, managed to grow its share of that market by just under a percentage point to 61.8 percent.
The dip in usage comes just as Microsoft has been forcing full-screen ads onto the machines of customers running Windows 10 to encourage them to upgrade. The stats also revealed a small drop in the market share of its Edge browser, despite relentlessly plugging the application in the operating system.
I’m sorry, but no. Absolutely not.
You want to install Windows without giving up all of your personal information to a greedy corporation that will sell it or use it to train AI? Too bad, gotta figure out how to launch the command line during the OOBE process (it’s
Shift + F10btw) and figure out which command to enter (btw it’soobe\bypassnro), then restart your PC to reload the OOBE, just so you can avoid the absolutely brain-dead account requirement. Simple, right?You want to stop Windows from using Edge by default? Very simple, just download this tool from GitHub.
You want to get rid of Microsoft Edge? Just a couple of PowerShell commands. Very simple, very intuitive, very user-friendly, right?
You want to do anything that you as an end user aren’t meant to do? Have fun and dive into
regedit, while always having to fear that you might brick your system.You want to disable Recall/Copilot/whatever they call their AI garbage? Too bad, you can’t. It’s baked into the system specifically in a way that makes it impossible to remove. What a fucking simple and intuitive operating system. Always works like a charm and lets me do whatever I want.
Most people don’t care about the same things you care about. I do, and still find managing windows easier but I agree not everyone will because I also care about things like tpm support and kernel signing. Windows does all these things with no hoops, making it simpler for my use case. I’ve never had a registry entry brick anything.
I’m not super controlling, so I don’t feel an overriding need to remove edge just because it’s there. I used Rufus to bypass tpm and web login support with 2 checkboxes. Life just isn’t that hard.
For someone who doesn’t care at all, windows is significantly easier.
Oh I do believe that most people absolutely fucking hate Edge and want to get rid of it. I’m also pretty sure that people aren’t interested in creating an account that has basically no benefits, while just being annoying as fuck.
UEFI secure boot and the TPM API are fundamentally broken and provide nothing more than an illusion of security. If you want to see what a proper secure boot setup looks like, take a look at Android Verified Boot with an actual hardware secure element (e.g. the Google Titan M2). UEFI secure boot only exists to comply with standards and certifications written by people who know nothing about security.
Creating Windows installation media in general is a great topic, why the actual fuck does Microsoft not provide a bootloader in their ISO images?!? I recently wanted to create a Windows 11 install USB drive, but I didn’t have any working Windows installation at that time. I can’t create a Windows USB from macOS or Linux, because I need to use Microsoft’s stupid Media Creation Tool, which, guess what, only works on Windows. I need Windows in order to install fucking Windows. This is so insanely stupid.
It really varies on what distro/DE/etc. you choose. Many are very simple and user friendly.