I imagine this is why MS is finally backtracking a bit on the aggressive pushing of AI in every app. They're doing Clippy all over again, but OS-wide this time.

Just impressive how hard they managed to screw the pooch here. Have they forgotten that every other Windows release is universally hated? They had a good thing going until they discontinued Windows 10 before Windows 12 was out. Now they'll probably need to rush out another version, because the name Windows 11 is forever tainted.

Why write this article in January when it's main source shows an increase of 12% again in that month?? If anything this article should be about how statscounter is a very unreliable metric. Honest journalism really is dead huh.

Clickbait bullshit.

The source shows that Windows 11 usage has been steadily climbing for a long time, including in January - the latest data available - but presumably that didn't fit their narrative so they ignored all the data except the data single point that they liked which corresponds to the month where every business shuts down for a week.

Statcounter shows that not only is Windows use increasing, but also that Windows 11's share is too.

I don't expect anyone here to be happy about these things - I certainly can't say I am - but pretending the Windows is in the middle of an epic downfall when it actually appears to be doing fine won't help anyone except Microsoft.

People upgrading to Windows 11 be like:

Its the first time my peers are actually asking me about switching to linux. Sweden is an extremely techbro country, which i say because they have all the newest gadgets and then cant open a file for fucks sake.

Windows 11 market share went from 55% on October 2025 to 62% on January 2026. That's an increase of 7 percentage units, not a drop of 5 percentage units.

I been switching everyone to Linux, specifically Mint. It's good enough now for whatever.

Just switched to Linux. Convinced sis in law to try linux as she was having driver issues. Wife is about to try it on our laptop. Linux has reached a point of, it just works. It can play windows games better than windows, so no reason not to.

I switched to linux at the end of last year too! I am part of that increase and i like it.

Brand new windows measurably losing ground to it's prior unsupported edition and Linux is fucking wild.

glad I switched to Linux, Microslop's current state is a disaster. yes it randomly implodes sometimes, mainly by my fault, but at least I can rollback! no more headache of forced updates.

I won't update my perfectly usable computer just because microslop refuses to support it.

Swapped to Linux Mint over the weekend. No major issues. Steam works, LLMs work, web browser stuff all transferred over...it wasn't perfect but pretty easy to figure it out with a few online searches. The best part - it actually runs better. No more f*cked up bluetooth and audio as well.

A lot of customization can be done on it, but I think for most people, Linux is fine for the vast majority of users already out of the box. Some criticism is that I think the UX can be improved and a more layman-friendly streamlined partition mounting + file security management.

Love to see it

It's finally the year of Desktop Linux, about fifteen (or more) years after people thought it would happen. I'm happy for all the nerds who are finally vindicated. (I like Linux, but I'm an Apple guy.)

I'm sure it has nothing to do with forcefeeding AI or copying the user's screen content.

Please Stop using statcounter as a reliable source. Their numbers are absolutely wack.

Look at the recent surge in win7 pcs, that no economical data can back up, if you look at win7 stats of some countries you will find some weird spikes that died out this last month. why go from an os that has lost security updates to an older os that today's software can't run on anymore

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/windows/desktop/argentina

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/windows/desktop/tunisia

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/windows/desktop/ethiopia

Linux Mint for desktop. Bazzite for handheld.

Bye Microsoft

Been using Linux for a while. The only thing I miss is League of Legends, but other than that we're chilling.

Statcounter data has a lot of shortterm noise. Longterm trends are meaningful, but do not get too excited about short term fluctuations.

At the same time Windows has been slowly losing market share over the years.

Really hope windows market share has peaked and it's all downhill from here. Totally done with their BS.