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Windows Drops Under 60% in Global Desktop OS Share for the First Time in Years

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Re: Windows Drops Under 60% in Global Desktop OS Share for the First Time in Years

#21

Post by backpackviolet »

OhSoHumble wrote: post #17
datadrivenangel wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a daily windows user for ~20+ years and haven't turned on my windows 10 desktop in months because the only thing I have it for now is anti-cheat games that are too time consuming to play... Anecdotal for sure, but microsoft's blunders and erosion of trust are starting to hurt it.

Yeah, but you're also on Hacker News. You are an outlier. I recently wiped Windows off of my gaming PC and installed CachyOS and, honestly, Linux just isn't ready yet. I'm also an outlier because I'm an SRE whose first distro was Slackware and I'm returning to the fold because Linux gaming has gotten much, much better... but it is still pretty inferior to playing games on Windows.

It depends on the game (which is one way in which it isn't ready yet, granted), but I've been amazed at how many games I can play without any issues. Maybe I'm just lucky that my taste aligns with what's playable but I've been fully on Linux for years now.

I'm glad you continue to try it, I encourage anyone looking to have not-Windows options to try it. You can check compatibility of various titles with protondb if you're curious.

Re: Windows Drops Under 60% in Global Desktop OS Share for the First Time in Years

#22

Post by OhSoHumble »

backpackviolet wrote: post #21
OhSoHumble wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but you're also on Hacker News. You are an outlier. I recently wiped Windows off of my gaming PC and installed CachyOS and, honestly, Linux just isn't ready yet. I'm also an outlier because I'm an SRE whose first distro was Slackware and I'm returning to the fold because Linux gaming has gotten much, much better... but it is still pretty inferior to playing games on Windows.

It depends on the game (which is one way in which it isn't ready yet, granted), but I've been amazed at how many games I can play without any issues. Maybe I'm just lucky that my taste aligns with what's playable but I've been fully on Linux for years now. I'm glad you continue to try it, I encourage anyone looking to have not-Windows options to try it. You can check compatibility of various titles with protondb if y…

It's not huge showstoppers. It's just a lot of little annoying things and last mile configurations. For example, I have to launch KCD2 with a Steam Deck related launch option for it to pick up my controller. It took a bunch of googling to figure that out.

I have an Audeze Maxwell headset whose dongle was left in Xbox mode (which Windows was happy with) and so I spent 30 minutes debugging why it wasn't working in Linux until I flipped it to PC mode - which crashed PulseAudio so I had to restart it.

Dota2 has a native Linux client... but it suffers from microstuttering and that's just killing me. FPS is high as I have a 4080 but, man, the stutters are killing me.

Battlebit initially launched in a resolution so low that I had to guess through game menus to get it to my monitors native resolutions. It's just... small and annoying things.

I don't really mind, personally. I grew up using Linux. I don't mind doing these configurations and it's worth it to have a dev environment on my desktop computer. It's just that Linux isn't really "Microsoft competitor" ready when it comes to gaming. Valve has put in a bunch of hard work though. Huge kudos to Valve for getting Linux as far as its come. I hope the Steam Machine takes off and we see more hardware and game developer support.

Re: Windows Drops Under 60% in Global Desktop OS Share for the First Time in Years

#23

Post by jrflo »

hmstx wrote: post #19
ykl wrote: post #18

Why are macOS and OS X listed separately? Is it to delineate pre-2016 Macs from post-2016 Macs, when the rename to macOS happened? But in that case, I have a hard time believing that there are way more pre-2016 Macs floating around out there than post-2016 ones, as the chart shows. I have a hard time believing that anyone is running pre-2016 OS X versions at all, outside of a very small group of hobbyists; I thought…

Anecdata: Every time over the years that my parents (now in their 70s) have purchased a new mac, software updates only ever happen if I run them. I don't visit all the time. They run outdated versions of everything until I hear "we need to buy a new mac because we can't use this website for some administrative thing", which is caused by not updating the os and the browser becoming unsupported over time. Also account…

That would explain a small number of true OS X users, but the graph reports 2x OS X as macOS, which is ridiculous.

Re: Windows Drops Under 60% in Global Desktop OS Share for the First Time in Years

#27

Post by ndiddy »

ykl wrote: post #18

Why are macOS and OS X listed separately? Is it to delineate pre-2016 Macs from post-2016 Macs, when the rename to macOS happened? But in that case, I have a hard time believing that there are way more pre-2016 Macs floating around out there than post-2016 ones, as the chart shows. I have a hard time believing that anyone is running pre-2016 OS X versions at all, outside of a very small group of hobbyists; I thought…

StatCounter uses browser tracking as its data source, and it seems like Firefox, Chrome, and Safari all froze the OS version they report in their user agent at Mac OS X 10.15 in order to avoid breaking sites that have poorly written parsing code by bumping the major OS version. I imagine that browsers that expose enough information to identify the actual OS version get shown as "macOS" and browsers that don't get shown as "OS X". See https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=216593 and https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1680516

Re: Windows Drops Under 60% in Global Desktop OS Share for the First Time in Years

#28

Post by jerhewet »

CodesInChaos wrote: post #4

I wonder what the "unknown" 25% are.

In my case it's Windows 7. I have to override the useragent in Firefox nowadays; Hacker News now rejects any attempts to login or browse the site if I don't fake the browser useragent.

Re: Windows Drops Under 60% in Global Desktop OS Share for the First Time in Years

#29

Post by thewileyone »

sandreas wrote: post #16

I think the events line up... Windows 11 removing support for older hardware, skyrocketing prices for new Hardware along with bad decisions to make even more money and Apple making ahead of its time tech now forces more and more users to give Linux a try or just buy a Mac. Linux gaming is also nice. Often a pad or phone is enough, I know many non-tech people not owning a single PC any more.

Correct, the personal computer is not the entry point for computing anymore.

Re: Windows Drops Under 60% in Global Desktop OS Share for the First Time in Years

#30

Post by bcjdjsndon »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #20

Would love to see this decrease compared to mobile rates, before and after the decrease. People are using phones and tables like computers, more and more. Take a game like Habbo Hotel, it was originally browser based, had no mobile presence forever. Now most people playing it are on their phone. I wouldn't be surprised if RuneScape has similar numbers. Roblox definitely might, I've seen kids out in public, playing Ro…

> I've seen kids out in public, playing Roblox, off a phone.

Jesus Christ I hope their reckless parents are found and lynched for such irresponsible behaviour. Don't they know screentime causes the child brain to turn into a giant slop box?

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