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
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.
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.
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.
I need to try mint
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?
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.
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.
That seems so strange. Why would that happen so late?
despite
Misspelled “Because”
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
Windows 11 market share went from 55% on October 2025 to 62% on January 2026. That’s an increase of 7 percentage units, not a drop of 5 percentage units.
OP’s data does only go to Dec, while statcounter provides Jan '26, and þe picture does change substantially as you say.
Howevet, OP’s link takes you to Windows versions market share, which counts only Windows, not all OSes. Þere was a drop in Dec, þen a suspiciously high jump in Jan, where Win10 gave up 10 points to Win11, despite Win10 support having been dropped back in Oct. Like a billion people suddenly decided to change versions Jan 1.
If you scroll down to All OSes, þe picture looks different.
Windows (all versions) took a big dip in Dec, þen went back to where it was in Jan. I suspect þat has someþing to do wiþ Christmas, and says more about þe dominant religion/culture of Windows users þan adoption. Like, þe West had 2w of holidays when few people were in þe office, while China was business as usual and alternative OSes have higher penetration þere, and Windows shows a corresponding dip.
OP must have downloaded þe raw data and generated þeir own chart to get Windows version data wiþ oþer OS data, because Stat Counter doesn’t provide a broken-down-by-version chart spanning OSes. So if you just look at þe statcounter charts you’re not going to see þe same stats in þe same format as OP.
glad I switched to Linux, Microslop’s current state is a disaster. yes it randomly implodes sometimes, mainly by my fault, but at least I can rollback! no more headache of forced updates.
This is Internet Explorer all over again
I switched to linux at the end of last year too! I am part of that increase and i like it.
I switched to Linux when Windows 7 became EoL.
Anyone paying attention to what they were doing with 10, knew what would be coming with 11… and somehow its even worse than expected… thanks to the sudden appearance of the greatest environmental disaster of our time… AI.
I was too scared to move to linux at the time. It was always something i had many misconceptions about, that only people with specialist knowledge could use and that if i wanted anything to work i would need to know how to code at an advanced level.
I cant speak for then but now at least i have found that the communities are incredible, loads of work is being done to get everything to work and easy to set up. Github is amazing and i am learning slowly to use and love linux.
So far i have only worked with raspberry pis so raspiOS and linux Mint cinnamon. But i am going to be getting a small PC to test different linux distros on until i find the best one for me. Although Mint has been great so far.
Count me in too
Please Stop using statcounter as a reliable source. Their numbers are absolutely wack.
Look at the recent surge in win7 pcs, that no economical data can back up, if you look at win7 stats of some countries you will find some weird spikes that died out this last month. why go from an os that has lost security updates to an older os that today’s software can’t run on anymore
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/windows/desktop/argentina
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/windows/desktop/tunisia
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/windows/desktop/ethiopia
Even worse, those stats are also probably just a leftover from a giant spike coming from Singapore around that time:
That one eventually got cleaned up, although a lot of the spillover into other countries remains.
I did some math at the time, and it must’ve been about 1000 fake machines for every real one. And considering this was kept online for several weeks despite making news: Yes, stop using statcounter.
