According to Statcounter, Windows 11 held a 55.18% market share in October 2025. That share dropped to 53.7% in November and dropped again in December. Now, Windows 11 holds a 50.73% market share.
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/windows/desktop/worldwide
Many are rollback to Windows 10, but Linux is increasing as well.
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide
Did my part. I’ve made it known amongst friends, family and colleagues that
- support for 10 is ending
- some machines won’t support Win 11 for no apparent technical reason (just to make them obsolete and boost sales of new tech)
- I’m willing to set up and support Linux systems for anyone willing to make the switch, thus possibly even prolonging the life of perfectly adequate hardware. (Only constraint: I declined switching people with strong software constraints that will not work or not work well on Linux and make them unhappy in the long run).
There were plenty of requests, including a small business, some absolute power users and even somebody on the other side of the globe. Everyone got a transition period, and since that is done, all machines have been chugging along without much issue. Support requests are near zero (and I do keep asking).
This may be my little bubble, anecdotal evidence and all that jazz. But from where I’m standing, this train has left the station, and it ain’t comin’ back.
What distro did you pick that is that bulletproof?
I went with Lnux Mint Cinnamon for the most part and Ubuntu GNOME in some instances. Either way, Debian-based systems.
Love to see it
Make Microslop and Aividia the new Ubisoft
Switched to CachyOS in December, so I guess I’m part of that statistic.
I was also part of the December Steam Hardware Survey statistic, but that was before I switched. So the December survey has an artificially inflated Windows statistic by at least 1 user.
With Window 11, Microsoft AND America being horribly at the same time, whole countries are looking to replace their OS.
Switched to Linux recently, so good to see that I do my part on this statistic. It ain’t much, but it’s honest work.
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.
How hard is it for laymen people to install and use it? Are there step by step instruction available?
I’ve had a techy mate have issues installing mint, but I had no issues and have dailied it as an OS only reverting to windows in extreme cases.
If you’re not dual booting it’s simple as. My friend has had issues dual booting on the same drive, whereas I went one drive per OS and butter smooth. Nice to be able to recover one drive from another without external tools.
This is the official Linux Mint installation guide: https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/
Are there step by step instruction available?
You may very well need specific instructions to convince your motherboard to boot to the Linux live USB media.
(Edit: As suggested below: You may need to find and toggle “secure boot” to “off” in BIOS. The point of “secure boot” is to prevent exactly the kind of change you are about to make. You can turn it back on later, if you have a use for it.)
Although, if you replace the Windows harddrive with a blank harddrive, many motherboards will then do the right thing and boot to the Linux live USB key.
(Warning: Get your files off the Windows drive first. The windows drive is probably encrypted, and so won’t be useful for recovering files later.)
Getting booted into the Linux live media is by far the hardest part.
Once you’re booted into the Linux Mint Live USB key, make sure Linux Mint detected and is able to get on the Internet. You’ll need your wifi password.
Once you’re happy with that, click “Install Linux Mint” and just follow the prompts. The hardest question for me was remembering what my time zone is.
Linux Mint will tell you when to reboot, and will even remind you to remove the Live Media USB key.
Reboot and enjoy Linux.
Yep most BIOSes will have a toggle for Secure Boot. Make off.
Getting a modern motherboard to boot to a USB key is still a royal pain in the ass.
(Edit: I forget that windows ships full disk encrypted now. Be sure to get your backups off of the Windows drive first!)
Pro tip: if you have the luxury of a spare hard drive, use it. Pull the old windows drive out entirely and set it aside to reuse later. Various “security features” that work to “protect” your Windows install behave better once the Windows drive is completely removed.
Once the Linux live USB is up, just click install and then “next” a bunch of times.
Pretty straightforward actually, plenty of distros even ship their own USB flasher tool so that you don’t have to use rufus.
Definitely step by step instructions available and even official videos now.
Which distro would you recommend for gaming? I usually hear people like Mint for that.
Bazzite or CachyOS (Bazzite for ease, CachyOS for performance).
Mint is good for gaming and simple for most people but there are other distros which run newer versions of software or/and has more access to software. I generally use distros based on arch, such as EndeavourOS with the caveat that they sometimes break.
Bazzite has been excellent on my older AM4 desktop with mid range AMD card. Steam came ready to roll and performance was so close to Win 10 LTSC, that I have yet to try a different distro.
I can’t recommend Bazzite. You can’t install new drivers if something doesn’t work right out of the box and that is just a complete no go for many people.
Yes, Bazzite adds complexity due to its immutable nature.
But then again, if you have driver issues on Linux (which has become reasonably rare these days), they’re hard to resolve either way, particularly as a beginner.
Been using Linux for a while. The only thing I miss is League of Legends, but other than that we’re chilling.
I view that as a pro. Switching to Linux made it easy to quit that addiction lol.
You can install League of Legends on Linux using Wine and Lutris: link
Unless they’ve completely changed the way Vanguard anti-cheat works, it’s impossible to play even if you do manage to install it
I am done with Windows at home. I spent a whole weekend convincing my computer that it was allowed to install windows 11, going into my BIOS and changing settings, having to make a live USB drive with some windows setup tool, navigating numerous outright wrong guides on Windows’ on website, and at the end of it, I was greeted with the worst OS I have ever used in my life. I had thought complaints about Win11 were exaggerated like complaints about Vista back in the day- Vista was bad, but usable. Windows 11 is legitimately awful. Everything runs like shit on it. That day I resolved to switch to Linux for everything I could and started dual booting. Was the Linux install process difficult and complicated? Yes, but compared to what I had to do to get my computer to run Win11 it was a piece of cake.
What’s worse? Thanks to advancements in Wine and Proton, Windows software runs better on Linux now than it did on Windows 11. I have games that ran fine on Windows 10 that run like shit on Win11, and run fine on Linux. Sure, I am a technical person and I am very comfortable with the command line, but legitimately nothing I’ve had to do with Linux has been as frustrating as what I have to do to try to get Windows 11 to do anything right. I thought I’d be dual booting into Windows at least some to run some programs but I legitimately haven’t found anything that doesn’t run fine on Linux. Plus Linux doesn’t spy on my and sell my data, and Linux isn’t owned by a pedophile who hung out with the Epstein gang.
Come on gang! Lets keep chugging - we can do this!
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.
Same for my partner’s old gaming PC: she used Windows 10 until recently, and Bluetooth as well as the steam overlay didn’t work properly.
Now on Bazzite they do.
It sounds like Bazzite is the most “plug and play” version at the moment, is that right?
For most things, I’d agree.
Yet, I found it tricky to get Optifine working on Minecraft (Vanilla, i.e. no Forge and such) since there seems to be no way to install JRE on the system. Had to work with a distrobox container, install JRE there and run the .jar file through it. I’ve managed, but beginners won’t find this very “plug and play”.
So YMMV.
Honestly, I don’t know which distro is not plug and play with steam nowadays. I’ve tried Garuda, Manjaro and Linux Mint so far, no notable issue.
I’ve heard lovely things about Bazzite with Steam.
However I have only run Steam on Ubuntu and Linux Mint, where it ran flawlessly.
I think the Linux Mint workflow of “click on software center”, “search for steam”, “click install” - is hard to beat.
Well, Bazzite has it pre-installed, but that’s the experience for other stuff lol.
I don’t recommend mint for newbies because it comes with X11 even still.
Bazzite has closed source software preinstalled? Yikes
Bazzite has closed source software preinstalled? Yikes
I get the sentiment. That said, if you want to do “gaming”, there’s no way around proprietary software for the time being, since both titles and some drivers are and will continue to be proprietary.
Regardless, running some FOSS is already better than none. So if Bazzite helps wean people off proprietary Windows, why not?
Probably more like it automatically installs is when you install the system but yeah.
This isn’t Debian. It has a live image that comes with Nvidia drivers so you can have these from the start too.
I need to try mint
Ehh, I’ve had a few problems with it, from the installation wizard crashing, to my wifi drivers disabling on system resume, to it completely freezing when I switch language input, to sometimes crashing when I load a web page. I’d try a different distro than risk the instability.
E: And before someone chimes in saying it’s my laptop, I will say I had none of these problems using Windows, other than it was very slow.
I think sometimes there are hits and misses when installing a distro. Could not get Mint to boot after installing it so I ended up installing Debian - where Mint should be easier to get going, Debian installed perfectly fine for me.
It’s your laptop.
Hah, but no seriously. It’s just always kind of a shot in the dark which distro is the best for your computer. Mint has been best for my laptop, but really did not get it even installing on the desktop. Manjaro or Tumbleweed worked on it.
I’ve been dual-booting for years. Made a big push to get the software I typically use on Windows to run on Ubuntu. Haven’t touched Windows in about a month and it’s wonderful. Haven’t got gaming nailed down yet, going to try Bazzite on my desktop. Some of my more graphics-intensive games don’t run well on Ubuntu. Pretty sure my desktop is compatible with Windows 11, I’ll upgrade at some point but I still plan to only use it when it’s necessary. Unfortunately it is necessary for me sometimes. I’ll probably start making preparations soon switch to Win 11 and be prepared for that to fuck my Ubuntu partition, so that’s probably when I’ll install Bazzite as well. My old Lenovo tank is already Linux-only.
It’s sad to say while it was the default choice for a while, it seems like a lot of people are avoiding Ubuntu now.
Gaming is awesome on CachyOS; it’s very possible much of the better capabilities there can be installed on Ubuntu, but I don’t know how hard that is. I imagine most games would perform similarly by default.
I won’t update my perfectly usable computer just because microslop refuses to support it.
Please be careful when using Windows 10, because any security vulnerabilities envolving Windows itself will not be fixed, and your computer will be more vulnerable to attacks. I’m not saying this to scare you off, but to advise you to take extra precaution and to remind you that most computer security experts do not recommend using and connecting to the Internet systems that will get no further security updates. I’m no expert myself, but I’m pretty sure that things like making sure you web browser is always updated, being careful with the programs you choose to download, and using updated antivirus software are the most common tips for this kind of situation. You might want to do more your research on this topic yourself if you haven’t yet. Stay safe!
The thing is, (as you already know but this is for people that have not yet taking the plunge), Linux today is so unbelievable good. It’s both snappy and good looking. A 5 year old computer feels like new. There might be a little tinkering, but you know that might be a quite fun experience and your computer feels like new again.
I run Debian for my tv PC, steam link with bt controller - shit just works and it’s so fast.
I’ve been dailying linux since 2010 and it’s gotten way easier. stuff that didn’t work just does now. remember printer and wi-fi driver hell? now it works worse on windows if anything. games and some proprietary software are the only anchors, and that’s kinda going away slowly
I still can’t convince my dad to just switch, but at this point running Windows is in nearly every single way worse than just running a popular Linux distro.
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.)
Apple’s media support is incredible.
I have one platform where HDR photos/video playback and editing, JpegXL, HEIFs from my camera and such all just work. And it’s definitely not my KDE desktop, nor Windows 11.
Apple’s media formats are horrible though
Microsoft just wants our wallets lol.
That’s a surprisingly large increase, wow. I switched back in 2017 and I’ve been using it ever since, but that’s good to see other people are making the switch too.
