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.
Our old asses are over here learning mint and Ubuntu on new machines. That wasn’t on our 30s-40s disco card.
It’s fun. Everything looks good, then attach the external monitor to the laptop and it won’t detect. There’s a workaround, there’s almost always a workaround, but these basics of windows are in pieces in Linux.
The basic expectations with windows, like monitor detection, aren’t necessarily there.
Spite is a hell of a fuel though. Oh and I still have my win 10 disc and put a fresh install on another machine.
The Steam Deck and it’s desktop mode are why I decided to try jumping head first into a single boot of Bazzite on my main computer, it’s basically like using a Steam deck, just across four monitors, a year in and I haven’t looked back.
linux desperately needs/needed something like apple for macOS to drive usability. the steam deck is exactly that- one hardware set to really nail the UX and then expand from there.
thanks for the recommendation, I’m going to give that a try myself!
Another recommendation for Bazzite. I’ve been using it on my main laptop for months now and it’s been great. Had to learn a little bit about how to install things on immutable distros (tip, search using “silverblue” instead of “bazzite,” the solution will be the same), but now that I understand it, I really like it as a concept. Incredibly stable.
Oh and gaming just works. Bazzite comes pre-configured for gaming (and that includes monitor switching, etc).
I plugged in a monitor yesterday on my work laptop 's HDMI port and it did nothing. After some troubleshooting I apparently had to unplug the USB-C dock for it to work. Let’s not pretend Windows is smooth sailing all the time.
At a meeting I was given some kind of remote dongle to duplicate my screen to a monitor and it did nothing. Had to run some exe first. Again, not plug and play.
But there was always a workaround.
Literally on Thanksgiving I pulled my work Mac out to do some stuff. It didn’t know my monitor from home was unplugged. I had to find hotkeys to move windows to the current display because Settings was opening on the non existent display which it also thought was the main one.
That is to say, even macOS gets this shit wrong. There is no perfect OS.
Is it a Dell? I’ve had all kinds of goofy problems like that with Dell hardware. The old ass port replicator my job gave me in 2014 can run 3 screens + laptop flawlessly but every one I’ve received since then can only do 2 screens or 3 screens and no laptop. It’s stupid.
My work dell has that stupid issue too.
Or at least it did, until I booted into Mint for the first time. 4 screens immediately usable. Boot back into Windows and it goes back to not working. You get one monitor mirrored.
Maybe they have some shady limitation in a driver unless you have the highest end models?
Sometimes I wonder what’s going on with other peoples’ setups. Like where do all these issues come from?
I just plug in my external monitors, usually through the usb-c hub at work so both of them at the same time. But sometimes just a single one. Always gets detected. I’ve had Debian and now TumbleWeed on my work computer, neither gave me an issue with this.
There are other issues I’m having - such as I wish I didn’t have to open the lid for a second and then close it back when I’ve just connected the externals and want to use it in clamshell mode (as Apple calls it; idk if there’s a name for it outside of Mac/Apple). But all the expected functionality is there.
Mint and Ubuntu are Debian based.
Try something Fedora based. I’ve had far less issues with it when it comes to hardware.
Me: Debian? Fedora? Why are you making up words as if I speak other languages you made up???
#include <iostream>
int main() { std::cout << “no, this is a different language” << std::endl; return 0; }
(All joking aside, the content was made for someone who already knew what a Distro was. If you want to know, feel free to ask for more info)
I’ve tried quite a few distros on an MSI I got and it wouldn’t recognize dual monitors with Nvidia drivers on any I tried. I went with fedora, Debian based ones, kde, etc. And none worked. Had to go back to Windows on that laptop.
Ah my work laptop had the same issue but as soon as I saw it didn’t work I just switched to windows and it worked.
The only laptop I keep permanently Linuxed I use as a VPS lol. Got Nextcloud on it and a few bots.
that’s switchable graphics for you. nvidia refuse to spill their secret sauce so all the effort in supporting that over the past 10 years have been clean-room reverse engineering. the only way it will ever get any good is if nvidia does it, or if they open it up.
Ah, yeah, MSI Nvidia does have issues in general for some reason. At that point basically only Arch or similar that’s more advanced would fix the problem, and at that point it does make sense for most users to stick with Windows.
I’d recommend what others here say and get an iot version or using a Rufus install in those cases of Windows though, to avoid all the telemetry etc.
that’s why i switched to a mac instead of linux. i love linux on my servers, but for day to day productivity? nothing beats the “turn it on and go” of a mac. of course you pay for it with money (for a mac) or time (for linux)
but at least i don’t get full screen ads for windows 11!
I generally like my work mac, but external monitor support (used as an example against Linux here) is awful.
Sure, if you connect one (1) monitor and still use the laptop screen, it’s fine. But try to connect multiple, or disable the laptop screen, or try to lock the dock to your main monitor and you have to jump through all sorts of hoops or it just doesn’t work.
In the end, macos is just another OS, a good one in general, but definitely not without it’s quirks and issues. I run Arch (btw) with KDE/Plasma on my own desktop and am very happy with it
I was almost gonna be a smartass and say you can, but then I realized that there are no nVidia drivers. You CAN use an AMD external GPU on newer Intel Macs, but even the newest Intel Mac is pretty old now. They still get software support, but the performance isn’t comparable to Apple Silicon anymore, so you’d have to sacrifice a lot of CPU power and efficiency to be able to use an eGPU that doesn’t even have CUDA.
one method that helps is to not think of it as a workaround but as assembling a kit. the base system only comes with what everyone will need, and adding on an extra piece makes it more yours. that also helps with motivation to do a good job of it.
What if I want to pay a little extra to get something ready-to-run? Windows for me then?
