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

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  are you serious?

  by vivzkestrel
• I've seen that a lot more often lately because of AI botnets. Supposedly the bots come (or appear to) from some countries more than others, and sometimes websites are just banning a whole country because the load from bots is so bad they it outweighs a small number of real human visits.

  Could also be an "instead of implementing legally mandated ID verification, we will simply block all traffic from any country that requires it" thing.

  by hogwasher
• Yes, it is still tough to compete on the desktop with Microsoft and Apple, but things are moving in a positive direction.

  The basics haven't changed. There is still little concern for compatibility with Linux. What exists is an ugly band-aid that covers the problem instead of addressing it.

  This "feature" alone just keeps on giving to the less technically inclined.

  by jqpabc123
• I wonder what the "unknown" 25% are.
  by CodesInChaos
• Maybe windows users who weren’t smart enough to correctly answer the survey question?

  Nevermind. These stats are computed by website visits:

  https://gs.statcounter.com/faq#methodology

  So I guess web browsers that obfuscate?

  by sanmarzano
• Looking at the FAQ for the data source [0], specifically this part

  > What methodology is used to calculate Statcounter Global Stats? > Statcounter is a web analytics service. Our tracking code is installed on more than 1 million sites globally. These sites cover various activities and geographic locations. Every month, we record billions of page views to these sites. For each page view, we analyse the browser/operating system/screen resolution used and we establish if the page view is from a mobile device.

  I assume they infer the OS and stuff from the User Agent and other stuff in the headers of requests. And I assume scrapers collecting data for AI systems don't include the standard User Agent stuff Statcounter classified when they made their data collection tooling. So my guess would be non-browser-automation style scrapers that are getting around defenses and have header data Statcounter doesn't know how to classify to an OS.

  [0] https://gs.statcounter.com/faq#methodology

  by modriano
• The cope in this article is strong ... the year of desktop linux indeed.

  > Of course, StatCounter’s numbers should be read for what they are: web usage statistics, not a direct count of installed operating systems.

  I am unclear how one writes that paragraph after saying the numbers are "global desktop OS usage" over and over again. Not to mention the android share of web usage is 0%.

  by blitzar
• How many desktop Android users are there?
  by echoangle
• 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.

  by datadrivenangel
• 2026: the year of Unknown on the desktop
  by ChrisArchitect
• 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.

  by sandreas
• 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 Apple’s data showed that generally Mac users were pretty aggressive about being on relatively current macOS versions.

  Also why separate out OS X and macOS at all when it appears that all Windows versions are lumped together and all Linux versions and distros are lumped together?

  All of this seems very suspect.

  by ykl
• 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 for i.e musicians (I hear there's a few of them in Apple-land) who seem to keep getting bitten by Apple somehow breaking compatibility with a bunch of audio software/equipment even with developer release, time and time again.

  Multiply by real world amounts of people.

  Would be a good explanation...

  by hmstx