First, Windows 10 (WX) vs. Windows 7 (W7). Last month, WX looked to finally be on pace to equal W7 by November, to such an extent that even I was willing to posit that they might actually make it this time. That was then, though, and this is now, and in the now, WX has once again lost ground to its much, much older cousin. As reported by Wayne Williams at Betanews:
Usage share monitoring service StatCounter saw Windows 10 overtake Windows 7 back in February, and its latest figures put the new operating system on 50.07 percent, well ahead of Windows 7 on 37.2 percent.
Rival monitoring service NetMarketShare disagrees however. While Windows 10 gained significant share in August, at Windows 7’s expense, the latest figures, for September, show a reversal of fortune.
According to NetMarketShare, in September, Windows 10 went from 37.80 percent to 37.44 percent, a fall of 0.36 percentage points.
In the same time frame, Windows 7 gained 0.61 percentage points to sit on 40.88 percent, 3.44 percent ahead.
Based on last month’s figures, I predicted that Windows 10 would take the lead by November, or possibly as early as October, but that no longer seems to be the case. It's now more likely to be the start of next year, but we shall see.In case you're wondering what that looks like, here's the graph from NMS:
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| W7/WX still leads everyone else by a large margin, but Linux now clearly leads the "everyone else" pack. |
I'd previously pegged ±0.5% as the threshold for significance, which these changes just barely exceed. That said, it does mean that the "by November" prediction for WX/W7 parity will likely be missed for a third straight year, which has to be slightly embarrassing for Microsoft.
This development isn't nearly as interesting as the month's OS usage changes among Steam users, though.
Steam's user base, which is basically equivalent to the PC gaming community at large, since basically all of them use Steam, had been some of the fastest adopters of WX prior to now. But then Steam Play and Proton happened, and the result appears to be a drop in overall Windows usage by Steam gamers, with Linux rising to an all-time high. As reported by Phoronix:
The just-published September 2018 Steam Survey results put the Linux gaming marketshare at 0.71%, an increase of 0.12% compared to the month prior, while Windows is down by 0.14% (down to 96.3%) and macOS up by 0.05% to 2.92%. The Linux increase is likely thanks to more Steam gamers trying out Linux following Valve's Steam Play announcement for getting more Windows-based games running nicely on Linux via Wine/Proton.
While 0.71% isn't much in the grand scheme of things, this is the largest Steam Linux marketshare since August of last year. At the same time, without a doubt, Steam's overall number of customers has surely increased the past year as well.The most popular Linux distro among Steam gamers? Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS 64 bit, aka "Bionic Beaver," aka the same distro that I was experimenting with in August; interestingly, Valve's own SteamOS isn't even listed on their own software survey:
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| Windows 7 64-bit posted the only gain among Windows operating systems. |
Now, I'm still of the opinion that Steam Play isn't yet a polished enough consumer experience to eat significantly into Windows' dominance of PC gaming. That said, though, the simple fact that so many of Steam's customers (0.12% of Steam's larger-than-ever user base ≃180,000+ gamers) jumped from Windows to Linux on just the promise of a half-decent, Windows-free gaming experience bodes well for Valve's push to free themselves from Microsoft's heavy-handedness with respect to the platform.
Long story short, Valve should be feeling pretty good about themselves, right about now, while Microsoft... well, if they aren't feeling some fresh concern for the future of Play Anywhere and XBox GamePass, then they're really not paying attention.
It will be interesting to see if this embrace of Linux by non-corporate Windows users spreads outward from gaming to other areas, but with even gaming, which is the most system-intensive and Windows-dominated activity in personal computing outside of the Enterprise sphere, apparently keen to use anything else, and W7's user base remaining stubbornly stable in spite of Microsoft's best efforts, it could be that a shift to Linux is actually in its early stages.
So, could it be that the long-predicted year of Linux on the desktop is finally about to arrive? Or will Windows 10 succeed in stomping all competition into submission, cementing Microsoft's monopolistic vision of personal computing's future for the foreseeable future? Place your bets, and pass the popcorn!
So, yeah, I thought I was all done with this stuff, but it really is just starting to get good...