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Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

blogs.windows.com

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Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#351

Post by ninjagoo »

p_ing wrote: post #316
ninjagoo wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They went all in on pretending to care about quality since the MacBook Neo. The numbers they're seeing must be terrifying. Yeah. Worldwide Neo sales at 5 million units + production raise to 10 million? [1] Even if only 50% of those are US consumers, add to that the number of folks switching over to linux [4]; and suddenly that's not small potatoes, considering there are only about 162 million working folks in the U…

Those production numbers for the Neo are global and from unnamed supply chain sources. I'm not sure why you brought the US workforce population into the equation as that mixes up scales, nor is there a 1:1 relationship between people and computers (I have 5 x86 systems and 2 M-series laptops in my home between work and personal use). Lenovo shipped roughly 16m units in Q1 2026 at #1, with Apple shipping roughly 6m in…

> Those production numbers for the Neo are global and from unnamed supply chain sources.

Good point. Fixed.

> Linux is hardly a blip and even the Steam survey #s back that up

The IDC link doesn't provide Linux numbers. These links [1][2] do; [2] backs up the numbers you're quoting. The trouble is how to interpret them in context - are the 1% changes per OS on a monthly basis even statistically significant?

The statcounter numbers show desktop share for linux as 5.2% in December, 2.8% in February, 3.1% in March, 2.63% in April. Chrome OS as 4.3%, OS X as 15%, macOS as 8.8%. There's an interesting huge peak for OS X in Oct 2025, Linux in Dec 2025, macOS in Jan '26, with 'unknown' showing a continuous rise to 9.4% in April. Even Windows is showing monthly variations with 58% at the lowest and 65% at peak.

I don't know what to make of those numbers. And how do you separate that from the ebbs and flows to Steam and Statcounter properties?

I think one can make a case for 7 million Linux users in the US, with 18 million if including Chrome OS. Now throw in say 50% of the Neo worldwide buyers, so say 2.5 million (to grow to 5 million at new production levels), and the analysis holds up. What's even more important is the trend - and that seems to be on the upswing, and may not be showing up in these measurements quite yet. And I'm sure MS has internal dashboards showing windows users in some detail.

Linux users are notoriously hard to measure. macOS users are not broken out by country. So that leaves us reading the tea leaves, so to speak, based on sales numbers and estimates on the US breakdown.

[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/united-st...

[2] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#352

Post by chihuahua »

noosphr wrote: post #248
cbdevidal wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also years of Windows muscle memory here, especially the keyboard shortcuts. I’ve used Windows since 1997. I’ve decided I’m done. A new PC arrives in a month. It’ll be running Ubuntu. I’m done. Maybe there is a Linux language similar to DirectX you might transition to? Maybe test code in a VM? (Although that gets you right back into Win11.)

>It’ll be running Ubuntu. I’m done. https://status.canonical.com/ You're in for a bad time. It's been three days and they still can't get updates to work. Get Debian if you must. Use something sane like Guix and OpenBSD if you can.

I've been watching Linux from a safe distance for 25+ years. The one thing that remains constant over the decades is that whenever someone says "You're having this problem? Well what did you expect, you're using X distro. Obviously you should use Y distro, then all your problems will be solved" and then another person comes along and says "No, you idiot, Y distro is completely broken, any sane person would use Z distro!" And if you play that game long enough, you eventually complete the circle.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#353

Post by robotresearcher »

underlipton wrote: post #249
colechristensen wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They want to be Apple. Apple sells hardware, services, and takes a huge cut being a software store. Microsoft sells software. They turned office into a service but it's still software. Nobody really wants to use their store. Their hardware is a cute little side hustle. Microsoft's strategy for turning into Apple is kneecapping their own software.

>Their hardware is a cute little side hustle. It didn't have to be. The same toxic dynamics that compromised their software poisoned their hardware, but they had too many products, or eras of a product, that Just Worked(TM) for it to have been a fluke. Someone knew what they were doing. They were screwed over by competing interests. Zune people loved their Zunes. Windows Phone 8 people loved their Nokias. I've seen S…

And that’s without mentioning XBox, a brand they built up to be pretty good over many years, and now they don’t seem to know what to do with.

They have a HW+SW+store ecosystem right there. Gently stagnating.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#354

Post by mancerayder »

ninjagoo wrote: post #250

Executive management at MS must be seeing interesting (migration) numbers on their dashboards, so they've gotten involved in white-washing their reputation without changing business strategy, hence the executive-level manifestos and platitudes coming out as of late. I'm sure they see the EU/Worldwide decoupling from US companies as definitely-going-to-happen and they have no control over that, so retaining US consume…

So I moved from Win 11 to Fedora Workstation some months back. I dual-booted back into Windows once or twice to check something, to upgrade my audio receiver with a serial port, that sort of stuff.

Everyone talks about execs monitoring metrics. What sort of metric would I have registered as? You see a desktop that's on 24/7 suddenly going offline. There's no way these people find out indirectly that I'm now using Linux on the same hardware. What are they going to do, somehow correlate my user agent string when I hit one of their websites or SSO endpoints? I mean, it's possible but I am wondering how much of this topic is wish fulfillment fantasy.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#358

Post by whywhywhywhy »

I know it’s intentional to build rapport but seeing the wording and language from windows on this stuff is insane considering their tenure and dominance and attitude of the last 30 years.

I don’t mean this in thee sense you should warm to them I mean it as in they’re on the back foot.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#360

Post by pragmatick »

codedokode wrote: post #285
kasabali wrote: post #187

> We’ve also made changes to the Power menu so you’ll always see the standard Restart and Shut down options without having to install a pending update first. You decide when updates happen, not the other way around. Great! We've progressed back to Windows XP of 22 years ago.

Microsoft doesn't allow its users even to reboot the computer without permission?

It only shows "Update and shut down" (which is a lie as it still will reboot) or "Update and reboot.

I think all this was a response to severely outdated Windows machines being infected with worms and what not. Microsoft got bad press for this and went (way) overboard with trying to force users to install updates as soon as released.

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