back to article We're number 1! Windows 11 finally overtakes Windows 10

Windows 11 has finally overtaken the market share of its predecessor, with just three months remaining until Microsoft discontinues support for Windows 10. Windows on fire Windows 11 migration heats up... on desktops READ MORE As of today, July's StatCounter figures show the market share of Windows 11 at 50.24 percent, with …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Daniel Bowker, blah blah..... or we're going to look at leveraging something else."

    I could really leverage a pint in all this heat. Then, would you mind me leveraging your loo?

    Please "LEVERAGE" ISN'T A FUCKING VERB

    1. intrigid

      I'm sympathy to your feel on this, but there are more importance.

    2. Excused Boots Silver badge

      I lever

      You lever

      He levers

      She levers

      They lever

      etc.

      On the other hand it does show the great advantage of the English language, wherein you can completely mangle the rules but it is still, sort of, understandable.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Lever is a verb (as well as a noun) but we're talking about leverage.

        Leverage isn't a verb.

        I leverage is meaningless

        You leverage is meaningless

        He leverages is meaningless

        She leverages is meaningless

        They leverage. is meaningless

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          meaninglessness

          Thou leveragest is still meaningless and I am buggered if I know what the dual forms would be.

          The graphic portrays an extended digitus indicis where medius might better reflect the attitude of most.

    3. This post has been deleted by its author

    4. sammystag

      Like it or not, it is a verb (as well as a noun). The OED agrees. No amount of FUCKINGs will change that

      verb [with object] 1 use borrowed capital for (an investment), expecting the profits made to be greater than the interest payable: without clear legal title to their assets, they own property that cannot be leveraged as collateral for loans you can leverage your stock portfolio and diversify into real estate. 2 use (something) to maximum advantage: the organization needs to leverage its key resources.

    5. deadlockvictim

      architecting

      Given how the Leftpondians are fond of architecting things, I wonder if they get people in to plumber their houses when pipes start leaking?

      And when getting a house wired, is the house being electricianed?

      What is with the War on Verbs in the US?

      Why must everything be verbed?

      p.s. Have ye noticed that cultural imperialism is rampant now across the UK? Look at the Netflix series 'Sex Education' from a couple of years ago. That was almost unwatchable for the cultural imperialism. It gave such a misleading impression of the UK. Thankfully Emma Mackey & Ncuti Gatwa made the first few seasons worth it.

      Look at El Reg and her obligation that all articles be written with US English as standard.

      I am a fan of Tim Harford's 'Cautionary Tales' [1] but he is obliged to write his podcasts with a US audience in mind and so, anything that might shake US listeners out of their comfort zone is removed.

      [1] https://timharford.com/articles/cautionarytales/

    6. tatatata
      Coat

      Usagating "leverarge" as verb is very common.

    7. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I'm glad it's not just me who finds this incessant use of 'leverage' to be fucking annoying!

      Note also that if spoken it has to be the American way, with a short pronunciation of the first 'e'. This somehow manages to make it even more annoying!

  2. Mentat74
    Facepalm

    Can you really call yourself number one...

    If you have to bribe, coerce and manipulate people into installing your latest OS ?

    1. wolfetone Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: Can you really call yourself number one...

      Well I mean they're clearly the number 1 at doing that.

      1. ecofeco Silver badge

        Re: Can you really call yourself number one...

        Exactly.

    2. Bluffer Cubic

      Re: Can you really call yourself number one...

      Indeed. Note that there are a lot of people, like me, have to use Windows 11 because of (large) company policies. I like working for my company but I do not like working with Windows. Unfortunate they embraced Microsoft services.

  3. katrinab Silver badge
    WTF?

    "Lots of fiscal years are starting in July or October"

    Really? Which countries?

    UK, India, and Japan start their fiscal years in April. Most of the rest of the world starts their fiscal years in January.

    1. zimzam

      Mostly in the southern hemisphere. Most US states start their fiscal years in October.

      1. Daniel M

        The United States federal government's fiscal year is October through September.

        However, for example, Texas' (including state public schools) fiscal year is September through August. YMMV

    2. doublelayer Silver badge

      I think they're mostly talking about companies, and July-to-June fiscal years are somewhat common in my limited experience. But if it is governments, your biggest candidates for each include:

      July fiscal year: Australia, Bangladesh, Egypt, Kenya, Pakistan

      October fiscal year: United States, Thailand, lots of Caribbean countries

    3. Briantist69
      Happy

      In the UK, Companies House allows you to pick any month you like for your annual returns. Mine, for example, has

      "Next accounts made up to 31 May 2025 due by 28 February 2026"

      They don't have to follow the government tax year.

      1. Spazturtle Silver badge

        "Next accounts made up"

        I think Enron tried that one before.

  4. Ol'Peculier

    Wonder if it's because I swapped four machines over last week?

    And for those who would go down the Linux route, we use third party software that only runs on Windows.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      re: third party software

      Perhaps it is time to look into alternatives that run on different OS's? Then you can rid yourself of being tied to windows and this other software.

      I have one windows system in my business. It runs XP and controls an ancient NC Lathe. The system is air-gapped and is only used for this purpose. The software vendor went out of business years ago. When this system dies, we will replace the lathe with another one but at the moment, it does the job we want from it.

      1. Sudosu Silver badge

        Re: re: third party software

        I wonder how companies that are Windows only will feel as, eventually, their corporate IP is used to train Copilot, which will then be used by their competitors.

  5. chivo243 Silver badge
    Trollface

    What about?

    All those times I installed Win11 in a vm and then blew it away? Surely I'm not the only one to try 11 and spit it out, and foolishly try again?

  6. elsergiovolador Silver badge

    Fine

    Still no fine from the EU for creating excessive e-Waste.

    If EU and other governments really cared about environment, Microsoft would have been fined out of existence for this.

    1. doublelayer Silver badge

      Re: Fine

      In order to fine them, there would have to be a law against doing this. There isn't. If there was, Android manufacturers and IoT manufacturers who can't be bothered to keep servers running would have been smacked by it a long time ago. Your closest thing, which occasionally works against the most flagrant IoT ones is consumer protection law, but that doesn't work perfectly and Microsoft won't meet the criteria to be punished by it.

      1. Excused Boots Silver badge

        Re: Fine

        Indeed and what law could there be?

        After all, MS are not removing your PCs from you, they are not rendering them inoperable, they are not forcing you to landfill them, they are simply ending support for an OS which started out ten years ago

        They will work just as well on 16th. October just as well as they did on 14th. no more no less.So any sort of consumer protection laws can’t apply here, as you rightly say. So I can’t see any legal argument going anywhere..

        Now it is certainly arguable that MS have set unnecessarily onerous and seemingly arbitrary hardware requirements for W11, maybe? But again. not really actionable is it?

        So hypothetically, if you are running a W10 machine which can’t or won’t update* then what’s the problem? Well I’ll answer my own question, it’s legal compliance isn’t it? Does your regulator or insurer require that ‘all of your devices are running a currently supported Operating System’? Honestly answer ‘no’ and kiss farewell to being in compliance with said regulator and, if the worse happens, your insurer paying out.

        Honestly for home users, I’d forget the warnings, your PC isn’t going to self destruct on Oct 15th, it's not going to delete all of your stored ‘cat videos’. Large, enterprise corporations probably refresh their machines every three years or so anyway, so probably not an issue for them. It’s the SMSs, 10,50,100 seat setups who don’t have the funding to replace machines but are still beholden to regulators.

        Just today, I have dealt with such an issue, I work for a service provider and as such we have to be compliant at least with the Cyber Security Essentials requirement, because our clients insist on it - fine.

        We have one PC which does nothing other than run a web browser displaying the output from out network monitoring software (which incidentally runs on Linux), it’s running W10 and can’t be updated to W11, so I blew it away and installed Ubuntu 24.02 on it, and now I can, hand on heart say we are only running supported operating systems!

        * There are, of course, well known methods of getting around this, to some extent, depending on how much effort you are prepared to out in.

        1. LybsterRoy Silver badge

          Re: Fine

          Fully support your comments re home users but I would add - as long as there is an up to date anti-virus, anti-malware on the PC that is a) maintained and b) catches things before the PC does

  7. intrigid

    2.17%

    I still see no reason to quit using Windows 7. Everything (that matters) works.

    1. Excused Boots Silver badge

      Re: 2.17%

      And if a home user or very small company that is fine.

      But what if you happen to be a company which is regulated, whose insurance has a requirement that you are ‘only using supported operating systems’?

      1. stiine Silver badge

        Re: 2.17%

        So, get a support contract from your brother-in-law.

      2. intrigid

        Re: 2.17%

        Then it sucks to be them, having their employees doddle away on a bloated OS where they can hardly get anything done. I know because I work for such a large company.

    2. BinkyTheMagicPaperclip Silver badge

      Re: 2.17%

      security fixes, unless you're running completely disconnected from the Internet

      1. intrigid

        Re: 2.17%

        "Security updates" are not a mandatory requirement, even though most people think of them as such. If you're really concerned that you might get hacked/ransomwared at some point, there is nothing stopping you from keeping regular OS image backups, and only doing your sensitive/financial tasks on a 2nd PC with the latest security updates.

    3. MONK_DUCK

      Re: 2.17%

      With all the major browsers either ending support for Windows 7 this year, or having ended. It would need to be as a stand alone machine, without Internet, maybe a bit of typing and printing etc...

      1. intrigid

        Re: 2.17%

        1) Older browser versions work; they are not cut off from the internet when a new version comes out. Security certificates eventually expire, but that won't be until 2038 at the earliest.

        2) There exist open-source forks to Chromium and Firefox that restore Windows 7 support to the most recent versions and codebases of the browsers.

        1. LybsterRoy Silver badge

          Re: 2.17%

          You are correct. I'm one of the recalcitrant home users still on W7 - I usea chromium based browser (Slimjet). There are a few sites that don't work correctly with it )or Chrome or Firefox) but I'm happy to say I'm not really interested in visiting them anyway.

    4. Mr Tinkle

      Re: 2.17%

      Yes indeed. And WinXP32 SP3 + firefox has only just become more unusable on the net in the last couple of years. Some sites, like this one, don't seem to mind it.

      Windows has been dead in the water since Win8 appeared in my opinion. Linux has taken far too long to get its act together. I've tried several times over the years to replace Windows with Linux but each time there's been fundamental issues surrounding stability that prevented me adopting it. Some of those issue were so bad, usually it taking out the machine completely, that it was sadly unsuable. I know folk here won't like me saying it, but WinXP32 has been far more stable than any version of Linux tried so far. It galls me to say that, but from my experiementation on several machines, it's true. I run a heavily moddified copy of XP that was built from Fred Vorck's work and later NTLite. Up time is measured in years. It runs like the clappers on a SSD. It makes the modern OSs I've seen so far look like they are laggy and buggy.

      But... at last there is hope..... My recent foray into Arch Linux has been successful. Ubuntu crashed on reboot after installation due the wifi card merely being 'present'. Debian turned the machine off merely by playing a news video. Arch has had quite a few problems but the key difference has been that they have been surmountable. All the basocs are there now and it even likes my old HP Laserjet printer. Arch's online documentation is excellent. It's all I've wanted for years...a stable system that gets all the basics right and doesn't have great loads of guff embedded in it.

      1. Adair Silver badge

        Re: 2.17%

        I'm sure your 'Linux instability' is a real thing in your case. Might be worth finding out why, in the light of the fact that millions of other people find Linux as, if not more, stable as Windows.

  8. Roopee Silver badge
    Stop

    50.24%

    I stand by my comment on a recent previous thread quoting market shares: completely inappropriate use of significant digits/decimal places implying high precision when in fact accuracy is more likely to be +/- 10% or worse, which completely negates the spin that is being put on this.

    I think most of the users of El Reg understand the basics of scientific method and statistics, so please, do us a favour, and stop parroting this nonsense and apply a modicum of intellectual common sense!

    By all means say this is likely higher than the last such survey, but static/decline is still within the margins of error - that is all you can say about these figures.

  9. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    Congratulations

    No, really, well done on threatening, coercing and browbeating your customer base.

    You've finally made it. Win 11 is top of the shit pile. Have yourselves a pint.

    I would ask you to think about the difference when Win 3.11 blew away Win 3.0, or when Win 95 took the world by storm and you didn't need to lift a finger, but a clearly way beyond that point of caring.

    So, keep wielding that whip. You obviously attain your goal, one day or another . . .

  10. billdehaan

    The real spike will come in September

    Not just because October is EOL, but because that's when the executives return from vacation and can start signing purchase orders.

    I lost count of the number of companies I worked at that spent the summer queuing up tech rollouts, only to have them sit on loading docks for weeks or months because every single required signature was on vacation.

    Of course, the companies that don't make the deadline, because executives kept stalling, only bothered to look at it now, and are shocked that a company with 100,000 seats can't be upgraded on two weeks notice, will be paying Microsoft for Windows 10 extended support.

    1. ecofeco Silver badge

      Re: The real spike will come in September

      I just went through this, but for last year. Budget sign off needed last autumn, sign off not completed until November, deployment not actually started until February.

      1. billdehaan

        Re: The real spike will come in September

        I worked at a company once where the Windows 8 to Windows 10 migration planning was held up by the fact that the company was still in the process of migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7. It was particularly troublesome because they discovered that 80% of the PCs in the company didn't meet Windows 7 minimum requirements.

        But no worries, IT assured upper management it would be fine, and they could switch to Windows 10, no worries.

        As for Windows 11, I think a lot of companies are waiting for the "turn off all that AI garbage first before we install it" version before switching...

        1. Excused Boots Silver badge

          Re: The real spike will come in September

          "But no worries, IT assured upper management it would be fine, and they could switch to Windows 10, no worries.”

          Now at first I thought, wow, this company had a particularly incompetent IT department, but then I reconsidered, they may have had perfectly competent IT staff, but an incompetent IT manager/director who told upper management just what they wanted to hear.

          Annoying, but true.

      2. Excused Boots Silver badge

        Re: The real spike will come in September

        "I just went through this, but for last year. Budget sign off needed last autumn, sign off not completed until November, deployment not actually started until February.”

        Fine but when inevitably there is a massive investigation into why XYZ didn’t happen on schedule, and they are looking around for people to blame, you do have a paper trail.

        Ideally one that shows that the root cause of the delay was that the CEO couldn't be bothered to sign off on something for six months.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It was me!

    Sorry folks, it was me.

    We've got 12 Wintel PCs in the house, and I finally upgraded the only one that can support Windows 11 to it, from Windows 10. And I cheekily installed Win 11 on a Raspberry Pi 5 and my Pi 400 using Botspot VM too. So that's 3 Win 11 instances.

    10 of the remaining 11 PCs will stay on Win 10 as they don't meet the hardware requirements. The other PC (from 2005!) already runs Linux, as do my fleet of Raspberry Pis.

    Sadly for Micro$oft and PC makers, I won't be replacing any of the Win 10 PCs any time soon, and even if I do, the replacements might not be Wintel PCs.

    1. druck Silver badge
      WTF?

      Re: It was me!

      Why, oh why? What have those poor Raspberry Pi's ever done to you?

  12. The Central Scrutinizer Silver badge

    Wow W11 is ahead of W10. And.....? Was there a point to that article?

  13. FuzzyTheBear Silver badge
    Coat

    Windows inches ahead of windows .. same shit different number .. i mean .. are they really that vain ? Ran out of stories have we ?

  14. BinkyTheMagicPaperclip Silver badge

    Waiting on the Microsoft July popup

    So I can buy at least another year of Windows 10 security (hopefully more, I'm running 10 Pro)

    Then accelerate my transition to FreeBSD; this browsing box has already run it for a few years, now need to do it for my main system that runs games and other items. May involve some Linux and Windows VMs until WINE under FreeBSD catches up.

    Also, unless I want my Windows Mixed Reality headset to turn into a brick I *have* to keep on running 10.

    My other VR headsets (Rift CV1, PSVR2) are really unlikely to work well under any Unix any time soon, so I may unfortunately have to compromise with my lounge couch gaming PC.

  15. M.V. Lipvig Silver badge

    I wonder..

    How many were "upgrades" like mine where I bought a conputer to put something else on it, but was forced to register before I could access the firmware and be able to install something different?

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So, come October

    A huge percentage of Windows users may well be unsupported.

    What a terrific business strategy.

    :facepalm:

  17. BobChip
    Coat

    Win 11 is finally No. 1

    Microsoft have finally achieved what they have been trying to do for decades!

    Congratulations!!

    You have now won the race to complete irrelevance!!!

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I still have my summer vacations to fiddle with the one Mint power management issue (or whatever it is) I still have, so I guess October is a reasonable estimate of when my Windows 10 disappears from the stats and helps 11 take a bigger lead over 10.

    It's not all rainbows and penguins, but all the functionality I want seems to be present and accounted for

  19. ITMA Silver badge
    Devil

    Number 1 eh?

    As far as I'm concerned, whatever the "market share" rubbish says, Windows 11 is a No. 2

    A big steaming, stinking No.2

    1. ITMA Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: Number 1 eh?

      Two thumbs up for my No 2's comment!

      Now that is poetry in "motions" ;)

  20. steviebuk Silver badge

    Nothing to be proud of

    when you've been forcing yourselves on people without consent, in other areas that gets you, quite rightly, put in prison.

    Considering we had our old deployment system attempt to block Windows 11 from being pushed out, but each month it started to fail, why? Because the cunts at Microsoft kept changing the patch name and eventually hiding that it was related to Windows 11, making it almost impossible to block. THAT is the only reason you've over taken Windows 10. Because your the arsehole that forces himself on everyone without consent.

    And Windows 11, fucking give me back small icons for the taskbar you fuck whits.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's only because people are moving to Linux, not because they're suddenly go to Spydows 11 with its Spycall and Spypilot features.

  22. Grogan

    Well... they are forcing Windows 11 upgrades down people's throats. Eventually some diligent dumbass is going to accept the update, or get tricked into it.

    I got a call from my father a few weeks ago saying his computer is all changed around. "Oh no!" (I knew immediately what happened). I went right away while I could still revert it without too much upset, but it still broke some applications afterward that needed repairing/resetting. It won't happen again... I set a policy to keep that computer on their current build of Windows 10.

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