Some takes on this development were, sadly, predictable, such as Computerworld's, "Windows 10 user share surges as loafers heed impending deadline." Others were more balanced, though, such as Mike Sanders at eTeknix:
It’s been around 4 years now since Windows 10 launched and if one thing has been made abundantly clear, it’s that people have been very slow in adopting the latest operating system platform. In fairness, there has been good reason for this. Firstly, it’s hard to ignore just how hard Microsoft shoved this down our throats. We got the option to update to it for free, but this was part of a huge campaign that saw Windows 7 and 8 users badgered for months to do it.
Since then, following more than a few problematic updates, Windows 10 doesn’t exactly have a glowing reputation with a lot of the PC community. As such, many have stubbornly refused to make the update.
Following the latest figures from Netmarketshare, however, it may have taken 4 years, but Windows 10 finally has a 50% operating system market share!
[...]
Microsoft is likely more than a little embarrassed that it has taken this long for people to adopt Windows 10. Particularly given how hard they pushed it. Like it or not, however, we fully expect that number to really start spiking towards the end of the year with that end-of-support for Windows 7 looming in the not too distant future.
If you haven’t updated to 10 yet, you’re likely going to. So, try and make the best out of a bad situation?Oh, I plan to, Mike. I'll be switching by the end of the year... but to Linux, not Windows 10. All that remains is to pick the most AMD-gaming-friendly distro; I'm currently leaning towards Pop!_OS, but Manjaro and (naturally) Ubuntu are both in the running.
Because this is the thing that even relatively balanced articles like Sanders' seem to keep missing: consumers really do have a choice, here. No, you probably shouldn't simply stay on Windows 7 indefinitely, but even with the January 14th "deadline" approaching, you still have at least five months to decide what you want to do about that (September, October, November, December, and January all count, here); and, realistically, you can probably take another month to do it. Only enterprises, who can have thousands of PCs on the old OS, are under any real time pressure, and even they aren't really under any time pressure, since Microsoft will happily sell them extended update coverage for Win7. The average consumer, with only one or two PCs to switch over, can do that job in a weekend.
And when it comes to what new OS to adopt, you have options there, too; Windows 10 is not the only and inevitable choice. You don't have to buy a new Windows 10 PC if you're happy with the performance of your current rig; you can switch to a free OS alternative instead, run any existing Windows apps that you simply must have using Wine, and be Just Fine. If you're a gamer, Steam now comes with Wine built-in on Linux, and there's Lutris for gamers who want to run non-Steam games. Yes, there are probably some truly ancient programs that won't run on Linux at all... but most of those have Linux-based alternatives.
The point is, you have options, if you want them. Options that don't come bundled with all of Windows 10's bloat and nonsense. You don't have to accept the Windows 10 paradigm... no matter what anyone tells you.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to "loaf" my way to my 9-to-5 day job.