Windows 10 climbs to 3.55 per cent market share, Win 8.1 dips Windows 10 looks to be doing alright, according to measurements taken by StatCounter. We usually consider desktop OS market share data from StatCounter and Netmarketshare in the first week of each month, but the former analyst also offers weekly data. With the debut of Windows 10 just 11 days behind us, a look at weekly data …
If you can actually find laptop hardware that works under XP these days you're doing pretty well.
On another note, the uptick in XP can probably be classed as margin-of-error stuff. It will be interesting to see if W10 increases from now draw more from 8/8.1 or 7 though.
"If you can actually find laptop hardware that works under XP these days you're doing pretty well."
.
Lenovo is shifting a lot of refurnished laptops at the moment (T420, X220) with Sandy Bridge 3+GHz turbo, for around $200 on NewEgg and Ebay. I bought a few, and they work fine with the XP drivers Lenovo supplies. :)
.
But they are *noisy*. I relegated my T420s (i7-2640m) to beta-testing work for this reason, three years of a howling fan (even if the fan is brand new) were enough. Good machines on all other criteria, though. If you can live with a throttled CPU they are fine laptops.
It will be interesting to see if W10 increases from now draw more from 8/8.1 or 7 though.
Having just upgraded my work laptop from 8.1 to 10 this morning, I'd say that we'll be upgrading the 2 Win 8 machines, but the Win 7 ones will probably stay where they are. I don't think it's a got anything extra that's shiny to make it worth the change in UI. Being a small business, we don't have IT, there's only me. Anything I can't do we pay outsiders for, like hosted Exchange and CRM.
The last sad user with Vista will be stuck with it until the laptop dies. I'm amazed it's lasted this long. Hmmm. I'd forgotten how old that was, I might suggest our first ever upgrade of a laptop not due to it falling apart - they never seem to live that long.
Looking at Statcounter, Windows market share continues to shrink. All Win10 has managed so far is eating into 7 and 8, where it's free for consumers. That's like putting a "new formula" toothpaste on shelf besides the old one, yet still losing customers. Bad news, if news at all.
> Looking at Statcounter, I see Linux flat-lined as always as a desktop OS
"""StatCounter measures market share by counting the prevalence of operating systems hitting web servers"""
That is not quite true. Statcounter works by having Javascript built into web pages. This code sends data from the client to the statcounter servers.
Web servers that don't include the Javascript aren't counted. Clients that block Javascript, or have other security or privacy plug-ins, simply aren't recorded.
So the stats are skewed to those who are unconcerned about privacy and who mainly visit self-selected sites that collect data. Of course Windows users are over represented and Linux is under represented.
I suspect that XP is also under represented because XP users are likely to stay mostly offline due to scares about being unsupported and vulnerable.
Your point is valid, but it doesn't mean that the figures advanced by Statcounter have no meaning.
Over time, even if it is only counting web clients that execute the code, those webclients change and that change is representative of the global environment.
Your typical public survey only needs 2,000 responders to be considered representative of an entire nation. Statcounter gets way more than 2,000 individual data items, so its representativity should be all the more valid.
Not at all. The typical public survey is regarded as valid for precisely the reason that it is thought to be completely at random.* Given the proffered objection is continuous and can never be measured by your the survey, it doesn't matter who large the sample, because of the non-random bias, it can never be regarded as representative of the entire computer population.
*Indeed this is actually one of the current points of contention amongst surveyors as the advent of the cell phone may be inducing biases into traditional techniques.
If this is the case then no wonder opinion polls are such shite. If I chose to ask questions outside the Institute of Directors one week, then outside the Benefits Office the following week, I feel there would appear to be a big apparent swing in opinion.
Exaggerated example, but if one were to poll only traffic with a Safari User Agent being reported, and ignore all other traffic then the world would be full of Apple products.
> so its representativity should be all the more valid.
You failed to notice that these are self-selected web sites and self-selected (by default) clients. Thus the representativity [sic] is invalid.
It may be that it has some useful data for many Windows users moving to different Windows versions as this is unlikely to change their browsing habits or configuration. However the original poster was attempting to show something about a completely different set of users with different operating systems. These are likely to visit different sites than Windows users visit and will use different browsers.
For example Linux users are far less likely to visit Microsoft servers or Windows news sites. They are far more likely to visit sites that do not use statcounter.
"Of course Windows users are over represented and Linux is under represented."
Any evidence of that? I would have though lots more Windows users would be running advert and script blockers due to the much larger number of advert nasties and browser toolbars targeted at the more prevalent platform...
> I would have though lots more Windows users would be running advert and script blockers due to the much larger number of advert nasties and browser toolbars targeted at the more prevalent platform...
It may be true that they _should_ run ad, flash and script blockers because they are more likely to have security issues. But without actual statistics your "though" [sic] is not useful.
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Yes, there's like 4 billion linux desktops in the world which just never show up in the stats. Remember, this is at least the seventh year of linux on the desktop. It must be running on pretty much all devices by now, and any stats that show otherwise are clearly incorrect.
Looking at Statcounter, I see Linux flat-lined as always as a desktop OS. In 11 days Win 10 has managed to double its market share.
Can I add to this discussion with "who cares?" I think everyone knows that the reasons behind the various company market shares are a long and involved discussion stretching back decades. Far as I'm concerned, I don't really care if people use the things I use (I have Windows 8 installed, after all) as long as they do things the way I want - much like this lovely lovely Kubuntu installation I'm typing from.
A while back I was having a similar argument with some guy who claimed that nothing Linux invented deserved credit because those things hadn't improved its desktop market share any. Putting aside Linux's prominence basically everywhere else, that really makes no difference as to quality. All versions of OSX combined have lower market share than Windows 8. Does that make OSX crap? (OSX is rubbish for a host of completely different reasons!)
Win10 seems to be hard to sell, I got some desktop notifications those days: "Your chance to secure a free copy", "Get it now while it's free", ... It's hardly selling, so they are selling hard.
Maybe their customers got scared by the price (if you aren't the customer, you are the product).
Windows 10 is a no brainer update from 8 or 8.1 and it's a reasonable upgrade from 7. It's got its issues, but its actually pretty good. At the least it eliminates most of the stupid bits of 8 and 8.1 and without the stupid bits, 8 and 8.1 were solid upgrades from 7. I won't bother to talk about Vista and XP as if you're still using either of those you're insane.
You're not the product because you're still going to be buying Windows. The payoff for Microsoft is pushing more home users into current versions of Windows to accomplish the following:
1) Push enterprise users to update their deployed Operating Systems to ones their employees are more familiar with faster than they might otherwise.
2) so that Microsoft can spend less money on backward compatibility.
Essentially expect that after the 2016 releases the Office products won't be supported on out of date Microsoft OS versions.
Windows 10 is a no brainer update from 8 or 8.1
Unless, surprisingly, you have a tablet, where many are complaining they took all the tabletly goodness out of the OS in favour of the desktop.
Also Edge is unfinished (and needs some settings and maybe a full screen mode!!!), Cortana feels like more of a proof of concept than working software and Notifications sometimes works, sometimes doesn't.
Plus, I've already had to roll back two peoples computers, due to 'issues'...
"Unless, surprisingly, you have a tablet, where many are complaining they took all the tabletly goodness out of the OS in favour of the desktop."
If people are complaining because of this then they may be complaining based on false information. I say this because tablet mode is still there and easily enabled in Windows 10, you can set it to load into it at boot as well I believe (I still load into desktop mode).
Hell on the Surface tablet you can set it to autoswitch to tablet mode when you remove the keyboard and put it back into desktop mode when you re-attach it.
Its hard to tell with situations such as this if complaints are coming from actual users or just people who dislike the company, its becoming the equivalent of the "console wars" situation gaming has, where its actually hard to filter out the fact from the fiction.
Windows 10 is a no brainer NON update for anyone who values his privacy and does not consider feeding the Borg with his private life data.
I'll be sticking with 7 until the hardware doesn't accept it any more, then I'll just have to move to Linux I guess. But Microsoft is no longer on my buddy list.
I am NOT trying to start a flame war, just giving my 2p worth...
Mom's laptop has (had) Windows 7, won't be going to Win 10. Yesterday I installed dual boot Linux Mint 17.2 (now the default) and will see how she does. (She can always boot back to Win 7 if she gets in a bind). If after a month or so she's okay with Linux, Win 7 is no more, but it will never be Win10.
From a technical point of view, Win 10 seems to be fine, I actually find it easy and a pleasure to use.
From a privacy, corporate overload point of view: Fuck you Microsoft. I do not want a computer that I can not control, I do not want to be tracked, I do not want to have my every key stroke logged. I do not want a walled garden. (There's a Dr. Suse rhyme in there somewhere). I will do everything in my power to personally avoid using this product on any machine that I come into contact with.
I don't trust disabling any settings until someone reports back with wireshark logs that with the settings off, no data is sent to MS (or any other corporate) servers. Until/When/If that happens I will not use Windows 10 on any machine that has external access to the Internet. I am forced to use it for Work.
Sorry MS, you've gone wayyyyyy tooooo far for me...
Oh yeah, forgot, I added a bunch of Solitare games (aisleriot) that she doesn't have to pay money to remove the adverts from while playing.. What a load of crap.
"I don't trust disabling any settings until someone reports back with wireshark logs that with the settings off..."
Even then, how can you be sure they won't silently be "accidentally" re-activated by some update or service pack at some arbitrary point(s) in the future? Are we all to keep visiting everyone's machines to check the myriad hiding places for all these settings... or set up startup jobs to re-write the registry settings every boot and hope no new "pwn me" settings get slipped in?
It's untenable insanity.
"Even then, how can you be sure they won't silently be "accidentally" re-activated by some update or service pack at some arbitrary point(s) in the future."
You can't, Windows 7 had an update which made it send more telemetry data. A second update silently changed the CEIP setting to on to reflect this, but even turning it back off again you're not sure any more because trust has been lost,
> You're not the product because you're still going to be buying Windows
Paying does not stop you being the product.
For example Sky TV still shows ads. They sell you viewing the channel to advertisers.
Even with Windows, if you pay for it or not, Microsoft will sell your searches or store purchases.
You poor fool! All I can say is that I hope you posted this from your smartphone...
If not, nemesis will hit you with multiple issues from now on. It's a bit like saying out loud that you need the printer to hurry up, as this document is for a meeting in 5 minutes. The speech recognition in the printer OS will detect this, and it'll go into a cleaning cycle, dump all its ink if it knows you're out of cartridges, or suddenly become incompatible with your PC.
Who doesn't, if even only occasionally, play Solitaire?
So how are the happy upgraders going to react when they discover that they have to visit the Windows Store and download and install it? And how happy are they likely to be, when they discover that “free” means “ad-supported?” Finally, how happy are they likely to be, when they discover that, to get rid of the ads, they have to subscribe to the ad-free version, at a cost of $1.95 per month or $9.95 per year?
Then there is the add-on DVD player, free for now, and $14.95 later, and even if the PC has a Blue Ray drive, the DVD player will only play standard DVDs.
At some point, the happy upgraders are going to feel cheated by their “free upgrade.” Welcome to Windows as a Service. (Service is what bulls do to cows.)
Windows 7, a solid OS, with support until January 14, 2020, will be calling them home.
"Who doesn't, if even only occasionally, play Solitaire?"
I certainly don't.
So how are the happy upgraders going to react when they discover that they have to visit the Windows Store and download and install it?
Win8 updaters won't feel a thing since Solitaire wasn't included in it either.
The rest will either download the real thing from Microsoft Store, or they'll download an alternative free solitaire game from the store or from the web.
Earlier Windows versions have had games that weren't ported to later versions - Reversi, Pinball, Minesweeper - and while people like you lamented their disappearance, they either moved on, or the more savvy people either installed another game.
Then there is the add-on DVD player, free for now, and $14.95 later, and even if the PC has a Blue Ray drive, the DVD player will only play standard DVDs.
I'd recommend downloading VLC or MPC-HC or something similar. Even for Windows 7.
Windows 7/8 Media Player didn't have Blu-Ray playback either so there's no loss in that regard.
AFAIK, DVD and Blu-Ray playback (along with possible Dolby licenses etc) require a license that cost something >$0. The Blu-Ray would also require consistent DRM updates which needs labor. The DVD add-on is unlikely to be a goldmine for MS, instead the $15 (from probably a very small portion of the whole userbase) is there to cover all labor, licensing and so forth.
"So how are the happy upgraders going to react when they discover that they have to visit the Windows Store and download and install it"
Its already installed on one of my machines (was upgraded from 7 to 10), I'll check on one of the 8.1- 10 upgrades later.
"And how happy are they likely to be, when they discover that “free” means “ad-supported?"
They might be annoyed, they also might not care as apparently other things have been improved, I don't know tho as the solitaire option in my OS was not a majorly used program or important feature.
"Then there is the add-on DVD player, free for now, and $14.95 later, and even if the PC has a Blue Ray drive, the DVD player will only play standard DVDs."
Blame regulation for this one, a bunch of companies got annoyed at MS for including DVD playback as standard in 7 and complained because they couldn't peddle there crap-ware. I think they sued or maybe threatened to sue (or just cried to the regulators, one of the three) for including DVD playback in Windows 7 and so they basically had to remove it from the standard windows 8 installs in some locations unless you bought a specific version (so they can say "they bought it for X reason so we have to include it")
I guess that has carried on here and for now they are sucking up on license costs. This one isn't a purely "BAD MS" thing. But I know its against the unwritten el reg rules for pointing this out.
Enough!
I recently upgraded to Windows 10 to try it.
The first thing I did, is turn all of the data collection off in the settings and then using a registry edit, I turned off the same features there too.
So far, Windows 10 is looking pretty good apart from messing up my drivers (which I easily fixed.)
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Shadmeister -
While I agree with your points that your average Joe will not know about the bug fixes and will quite happily click the Express Install button which will automatically allow all the data to be sent back to Microsoft, you have to remember that the average person probably won't even care that their browsing data is being sent back to Microsoft HQ or wherever. The people that care about keeping all of their data safe and secure, will probably know about these "downsides" of Windows 10 and will either research to find fixes or simply will not upgrade to '10.
Regards.
Re: the allegedly faster shutdown of Windows 10, it is largely an illusion.
When you shut down Windows 7, the video remains active until just a second or two before the computer turns off.
In contrast (pun fully intended) when you shut down Windows 10, the screen immediately goes black, and you wait while the computer goes through its shutdown operations and then turns off.
Add to that, a newly-installed OS will always shut down faster.
The actual difference in shutdown time is insignificant. Very clever programming – it's all smoke and mirrors, folks.
What trick did they use to make boot up seem faster?
Might that be the "Fast Startup" power option, which enables some form of hibernation instead of full shutdown?
It was defaulted to "Set" in the preview and if it is also Set in the general release then startups (and shutdowns, I suppose) would be faster.
I wouldn't say they will "never" upgrade. Perhaps some of them will use XP with an anti-virus enabled to help protect their system. You don't necessarily have to upgrade to the latest os to be protected, no operating system is 100% safe or immune to viruses.
Over time, as the roll-out continues, there will be far more running W10.
Can someone tell me what these figures are supposed to mean as I don't see any point in them.
Other, that is, for folks to become soothsayers and mediums - prediciting the future from a tiny bit of inconsequential bit of data.
Upgraded laptop and desktop last week. No problems. Disabled the windows tacking stuff.
Ignored edge and stuck with Firefox, Cortana not there, couldn't care less. Don't use it on my WinPho and I won't use it on the desktop. No moral objections I just don't see any use in these PA apps.
Win10. Maybe because I'm a WinPho user I really didn't get an big jarring effect from the move. It works, I can find stuff. It boots quicker. The rest...meh.
It picked up my rather ancient Samsung printer which was good. Even Win7 didn't like that very much.
SWMBO switched over without any complaints which is far more impressive. She hates changes.
I do find it strange that a lot of people get massively upset when MS does the data slurping thing yet seem perfectly happy to hand everything over to Google or Facebook. MS should maybe have kept quiet about it like the others?
Generally most people I know that have tried to switch are happy with Win10 and have had few problems. A few hate it or have had big problems and have rolled back to 7.
"I do find it strange that a lot of people get massively upset when MS does the data slurping thing yet seem perfectly happy to hand everything over to Google or Facebook."
This is based on an unfounded generalisation. I have a Hotmail account for those occasions when I need to hand out an email address I don't care about. MS are welcome to trawl through all the spam they'll find there; not that it seems to do them any good as, apart from SEO stuff, the predominant false negatives claim to come from themselves. Apart from that, I'm not a twit, my face is on no book and I'm unlinked.
Although I tried the preview out of curiosity (it didn't provide a driver for my HP all in one printer) I'll stick with Linux until I migrate to BSD and an old version for the rare occasions I need Windows.
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Sounds much like my experience, and pretty much the same as my response. It's especially the case as I've just been reading through another article:
http://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-cumulative-update-causes-reboot-loop-havoc-for-some-users/
which looks an awful lot like a problem that haunted HP users a few years back on Windows XP! The problem is, of course, that you can't hide the update so you download it and effectively put your machine into an endless reboot loop whether you like it or not!
Told'ya!
Who would install XP willingly or under torture? There is no hardware worth running that would run better on XP.
10 is a very good OS so far. Not work ready quite yet but very close. Its an excellent home OS with a few settings tweaked and an SSD for good measure.
Me. For lots of reasons.
1. A lot of applications run here that were written in Visual Studio 6 and being a one-man band I can't afford the time to take six months or a year out of my life to recode everything.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. My code ain't broke.
2. The XP Compatability feature: Quite simply doesn't work for heavy data usage.
3. Old crufty machines that run XP run just as fast as my modern W7 machines.
So why should I take a year out of business just to update something that already works? No thank you, it's XP all the way here.
RE: "My code ain't broke."
If it only runs on XP then its broke. You probably did things in it which were not recommended, such as writing config stuff into the install directory amongst other sins, rather than doing things in an OS version agnostic manner. Me too. Some of my code is broke also. Sigh...
Actually no. There are many things which aren't compatible.
For a start any version of Internet Explorer later than a certain version simply won't work with Visual Studio 6. So, if you use any of the controls that came with VS6 then it won't work. That issue is none of my doing.
Secondly, the code uses a lot of ADO because it works and that was the bees knees at the time. With XP I can blat out about twenty thousand queries and no end of operations on the resultant recordsets (each day's run may have over a couple of million iterations through all of the recordsets). All of the designs were the right design of the day and to MS' own approved methods.
Having said that; the quality of my code actually surpassed MS' own samples in the MSDN. This wasn't hard because, for example, MS were not very good at using data types in their examples.
On W7 machines and later this just chokes after lots of thousands of databases queries. The problem is, again, the lack of backward compatibility. Yes, I have tried to change the Connections and about everything else I can think of without going from the ADO.
But the point is. That the code that I wrote was to standard at the time. Not only that; I used Microsoft's own compilers, on their own operations systems against their own databases and to their requirements, specifications and standards and then along comes .Net and Windows 7 and what they've done is to ignore what was done in the past and made no real attempt at backward compatibility.
I know of other developers who have similar issues. On my main machine here I can at least load the application into Visual Studio because I have an old version of Internet Explorer. On my newer machines I can't even load the source code into the IDE because of the browser.
This last point. I fail to see how this is my fault. Anyway, myself and others all say the same thing: if we can load the code into the compiler then we can't compile it because that doesn't work for large Visual Studio applications. I don't know how large it has to be before it all breaks but I have an application with about 100 classes, dozens of modules, around fifty forms and the compiler breaks on Windows 7 machines.
Again, that isn't my doing.
That's why I need XP machines because MS have really buggered things up. And there's more than just the two of us with this problem: there must be billions of lines of code out there that works and was written well and to spec which still has to be supported.
Fair points all. I guess I've been lucky with the technologies I chose and have had few of those compatibility issues. I always found ADO to be half finished and flaky at best so avoided it. To me it looked as if they got part way through its design and then along came ADO.NET and legacy ADO got left in the ditch.
One should be able to trust the Roadmap of a company the size of Microsoft, but the reality unfortunately is that they get developers all juiced up with their latest tools, then ditch them when they announce the next big thing. Microsoft play fast and loose with standards too so there is greater exposure to these fads for developers investing in them.
It is of course difficult to predict what development tools are going to make it into the future but companies that are able to produce solutions for a variety of platforms without having vested interests in which way the market is moving are imho more likely to flourish.
Once I'd turned off the report back crap, things so far seem to have been progressing smoothly.
Actual Issues:
1) On install, it failed to detect my nvidia card properly until i rebooted a second time, after that it had no problems with the card. I rather suspect this was a side effect of the shennanigans with the nvidia driver update they had just prior to release. Been fine ever since.
2) One day, I attempted to sleep the system rather than shut down, as a test,and it just woke itself back up a few seconds later. Need to explore this now they've run through the first big update.
Bugbears
1) The white explorer backgrounds and toolbars. One of the first things I did was the colour toolbar hack. Still needs work in that area, but it's an irritation, not a showstopper.
2) The sheer lack of customisability (For example, anything pinned to the right hand side of my start menu will never appear in the most used programs section.)
3) Half the settings in one place, halfthe settings in the other.
4) the menu and heading text in modern apps is just way too large and can't be changed.
Good Stuff
1) It's rather faster on the same hardware than 7 was. Stability is good too.
2) No issues with hardware support aside from that nvidia niggle on the upgrade.
3) I've always been impressed with the windows 8.1 task manager screens, and this is one of those improvements that found its way into 10.
wow! even more down votes! hilarious!
is there such a thing as a win 10 fanbois?
i mean ...why? just evaluate it on its merits! the 3 machines were fucked. its not like i said
"they had 7, got 10, it worked perfectly, and then i told them that 10 was shit, so i put 7 back on."
come on, downvoters, tell me why...id love to know!
Windows 10 is the future. You are straying from the clearly laid out path and need some gentle correction to show you the error of your ways. It's just a couple of downvotes. Nothing serious. Yet.
For my part I've cleaned the GWX malware from two of our home machines and am in the process of updating another, carefully avoiding and hiding the updates responsible for it. One more after that and it's 4 that I will have saved from degradation.
But it'll come back with the next update
Indeed, which is why I have hidden the relevant updates and made sure that there is no update automation. I will regularly check to ensure that only those updates that I choose are allowed in. No update will be allowed until I have researched its true purpose.
Basically I am treating Microsoft as a Threat henceforth. It's a pain, but I value what I have and have no intention of letting them take it away
Win 2000 pinball is not bad, but if I want to play pinball I will go to the nearby (not so near in mid-summer, up a hill, too hot) retro-game centre, they have three working machines.
If I wanted to play solitaire, I would do it with physical cards.
Great time-waster for people not on piece-work salaries.
Oddly seemed to serve for relaxation for those on piece-work rates.
Minesweeper and solitaire, killer apps for M$, even though both had been eight-bit staples, the elderly with little computer experience liked them.
Back in the day "IBM clone" manufacturers would produce clean room versions of the bios that allowed them to sell compatible, but distinct PCs. Couldn't some bright upstart do a clean room version of XP with good support? It's what most of us want, really.
Er, did I just reinvent Linux?
I've been holding off on upgrading to Windows 10 while I waited for the inevitable privacy protector freeware to appear. That app now appears to exist, so I will consider it, after a test in a VM:
The app in question. Holy shit, check out how many domains it had to block.
Hows everyone enjoying the latest recursive loop bug? Good job I rolled back to Win 7 last week. OMG is Windows 10 a buggy piece of crap. Even some newer games refuse to work with it.
I'm staying with Windows 7 as long as Possible, then i'm staying on Linux Mint. I like my freedom. With Win 10 you get none.
Win 10's 3.98% seems like a lot in the first 10 days, but its a free Windows upgrade. Its not a huge amount considering that.
Windows 10 security and computer access policy is like a NSA wet dream too.
No privacy, Side apps and spyware hammering my bandwidth. Bugs, Bugs and more bugs. Games not working. And a Recursive bug that happened recently that trapped PCs in a loop. Which I had luckily avoided by rolling back to Windows 7 a few days ago.
I will use this Windows 7 till I have to switch permanently to Mint Linux or when they get the Triple A games I want and I can dump Win 7 into the permanent legacy gaming mode.
Windows 10 has way too much crud going on, and is a NSA wet dream.
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I finally found the time to put all the Statcounter numbers for desktops worldwide in an Excel, oops, LibreCalc sheet. There's a clear distinction between weekdays and weekends (e.g. XP dips heavily on weekends), so here's two sets one week apart respectively:
Wed 29/07 to Wed 05/08: Windows 86.08% -> 85.77%, OSX 8.01% -> 8.25%, "Other" 3.92% -> 3.90%, "Unknown" 1.99% -> 2.08%
Sun 02/08 to Sun 09/08: Windows 85.30% -> 85.23%, OSX 8.19% -> 8.06%, "Other" 4.09% -> 4.14%, "Unknown" 2.42% -> 2.57%
Clearly Win10 hasn't done anything to the Windows market share. At least a little "up" should have been expected, given that people had two weeks now to rush and BUY Win10 machines, right?
Linux (to be completely fair: including the odd BSD or Solaris used as a desktop) has to be in "Other" and "Unknown", the latter probably smaller distributions or even LFS. I wouldn't know of significant numbers of Amigas, Haikus and OS/2s around (no offense). I also very much doubt anybody sitting in front of a Win2003 server on a weekend surfing the internet or Win9X/Me/NT combined to exceed 0.5%, so one might well draw the conclusion that Linuxy OSs have about 5.5% desktop share on weekdays and about 6% on weekends.
It's all in the numbers. Wonder why nobody cares to read them properly (skew is another thing, but that can go either way, we just can't know).
" I wonder why though a tiny amount of Linux desktops as a percentage isn't considered a fail when a similar percentage of windows mobiles in use was."
'Linux' isn't a single entity with an agenda, marketing budget, or desire to be a monopoly.
'Linux' doesn't in general come installed on hardware ( Android excepted)
'Linus' doesn't try to force itself on you.
People using Linux, in general, have chosen to. That is they've bought a computer without OS or dual-booted or deleted a Windows installation and put a Linux on.
(For the record, I'm not a Microsoft basher. I have Windows 7 on both my laptop and my desktop. I upgraded both computers to Windows 10, and I reverted both in less than an hour, My negative reaction to that OS is based on personal experience.)
At some point, when the thrill of "Wow -- it's free!" wears off, and frustration settles in, people are gonna finally realize that Microsoft is not a philanthropic foundation.
Windows 10 is a bare-bones OS. Microsoft is pushing Windows 10, because they intend to make money in the future by charging for add-ons that were included in Windows 7 and 8.X.
On the other hand, Windows 10 includes -- also free of charge -- "features" missing from your old OS, such as
endless loops
missing drivers
software incompatibilities
NSA-class privacy intrusions
In short, beware of geeks bearing gifts.
In bickering about market share?
I'm quite certain that Linux in some form is deployed in every data centre on the planet including at Microsoft.
If the Linux Foundation ever finds itself with the marketing dollars and distribution agreements that MS have, then the picture would change dramatically.
It is still only recently that Linux has become a genuine alternative to Windows for the average punter so the next five years will be interesting.
From a personal point of view, there is simply no compelling reason to use MS anymore.
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