Windows 10 finally overtakes Windows 7... but it's not the "goods news" story that Microsoft was hoping for

Happy New Year, everybody! 2019 has dawned, and with it, at we already have at least two different posts from sites proclaiming Windows 10's belated ascendancy. Both Thurrott.com (Report: Windows 10 Takes Over Windows 7) and MSPowerUser (NetMarketShare: Windows 10 finally overtakes Windows 7) immediately noticed that Windows 10's usage share is starting the new year at 39.22%, which is finally higher than Windows 7's 36.90% share, according to NetMarketShare.com, and neither could wait to proclaim the future to be smooth sailing for Windows from here on out.

What they've apparently both missed, however, is that Windows has, once again, lost overall market share, with MacOS and Linux gaining at Windows' expense:

Window's share of the market dropped by nearly a full percent in the last month. At that pace, they'll be below 80% by June.

Yes, Windows 10 finally passed Windows 7, and this time WX managed to actually be moving forwards in the process, unlike last month, but Windows overall is still losing users to MacOS, and to Linux. Interestingly, while the Unix-like OSes gained as a group, both BSD and "Unknown" actually lost ground last month; only Linux actually gained, growing by 0.70%.

The other Unix-likes aren't doing as well as Linux is.

Even more interestingly, Ubuntu alone moved from 0.57% to 0.71%, accounting for 0.14% of the Linux's change by itself, and giving this one Linux distro a greater share of the market than Google's ChromeOS... meaning that Linux is not only growing at the expense of Windows, but that most of Linux's gains are coming in the form of a rapidly-emerging leader.

This has enormous potential ramifications for the future.

The fragmentation of Linux, with dozens of distros and no obvious way for newcomers to choose between them, was always one of the biggest stumbling blocks between Linux and any sort of widespread adoption on the desktop, but this fragmentation appears to be resolving itself. The market is speaking, and Ubuntu is pretty clearly their choice so far, and decreasing fragmentation may well move move Windows users to switch to Ubuntu, secure in the knowledge that they're adopting the most widely-used version of the OS, and joining Linux's largest single community. Longtime adherents of other Linux distros will doubtless rail against this consolidation, but it's looking more and more like it will be inevitable, with Ubuntu attracting both more users and more developers... thus creating a positive feedback loop of product improvement that will be nearly impossible for other Linux distros to match.

And, given Windows 10's considerable and well-documented difficulties with OS updates over the last year, it may well be more that Microsoft can match, too... creating additional incentive for Windows 7 users to choose Ubuntu over Windows 10, something which is pretty clearly happening already. 

MacOS 10.14 (the most recent version) is the other big gainer of the month, jumping from 3.5% to 4.73%, which would seem to suggest some migration from Windows to Mac is also happening, with former Windows users being willing to pay the Apple tax to gain access to an OS other than Windows 10. That Apple tax is a significant factor, though, setting a clear ceiling on the adoption of Apple's products by consumers at large; exactly how much market share Apple can steal from Windows is unclear, but Linux will run on users' existing hardware, giving Ubuntu a pretty clear advantage in this area. Whether that's enough to overcome MacOS's existing lead is, of course, anyone's guess at this point.

How this all unfolds is something that I'll be tracking over 2019, but there doesn't seem to be any reason to call this is anything other than an actual trend, at this point. Which leaves only one other question that needs answering: Just how long will the likes of Thurrott.com and MSPowerUser.com be able ignore the #LinuxShift, when it's clearly happening?