"Microsoft reportedly broke Windows 11 by injecting ads"

As someone who spent most of this blog's early years documenting the evils of Microsoft's Get Windows 10 campaign (that's small "e" evil, as in the banality of evil... but yes, it was still evil), a headline like the one above is obviously going to get my attention.

The story itself is... well, a delightful documentation of the banality of evil, exactly as you'd expect it to be, by Rich Woods at XDA:

Ever since Windows 10 was introduced, Microsoft has been pushing through ads in its operating systems, and that’s obviously not changing with Windows 11. It started with the infamous Get Windows 10 app that would force itself upon Windows 7 and 8.1 users, often presenting misleading options that would trick you into upgrading. That was a long time ago, and today’s ads aren’t as nefarious.

Except when they break things. Yesterday after releasing new Windows 11 builds in the Dev and Beta channels (two different builds, mind you), Insiders reported that their Start Menu and taskbar were crashing. As it turned out, it was caused by Windows 11 delivering ads, as was reported by Daniel Aleksandersen, who dug into the issue.

First of all, Microsoft did publish a fix [...] in order to bring your PC back from a crippling issue that was caused by Microsoft sending advertisements to it, you need to make a change to the registry.

Yes, that's right... in order to prevent Microsoft from pushing unwanted advertising through your PC operating system, you have to edit the registry, something which Microsoft typically advises against for all but advanced users.

This means that Microsoft have, once again, turned the Windows operating system into malware... or, more precisely, adware, but of a type which the user cannot remove (since it's the operating system), and which only advanced users can work around, by doing something which Microsoft recommend against when they're not recommending you do it.

It's at this point that I'd just like to remind anyone who's interested that Linux exists, and that it's much more user-friendly now than ever. Seriously, System76's Pop!_OS distro, with its very slick Cosmic UI, is what I'm using right now, and I haven't had to open the damn terminal since I installed it. Everything just works, while leaving me as much in-control of the system as I want to be, and my OS isn't doing anything untoward while my back is turned.

Sadly, Windows users cannot say the same.

Here's another pernicious thing about Windows 11

I just came across this gem from Joel Hruska at ExtremeTech, and had to share it:

I Will Never Use a Microsoft Account to Log Into My Own PC

Preach, Brother!

His reasons cover the entire gamut, beginning with the fact that Windows 11's new online and account requirements literally make it harder to him to do his job, and progressing to the fairly fundamental point that his PC is not, in fact, the internet:

To me, my PC and “the internet” are two entirely different things. I connect to the latter to download files, read news, and watch content, but it is not the totality of my personal computer. Using an online account to log into my personal PC breaches the distinction between the two. Weird as it is — because I’m willing to admit this is a personal oddity — I find that distinction matters to me. It actually matters a lot. I don’t want my local Windows account to be synonymous with an online login.

But that's not the biggest reason why Hruska is digging in his heels about this. No, the biggest reason, the real deal breaker, is simply that Microsoft keep trying to force the issue.

My problem with Microsoft and non-local accounts is this: Since the introduction of Windows 10, Microsoft has pulled every dirty trick in the book. It has obfuscated the ability to create a local account by hiding it in unclear language. It has deployed installers that hid the option to create a local account unless you were offline when you ran setup. It has deployed “Get Windows 10” tools that were so aggressive, they acted more like malware than a product built by a Fortune 500 company.

Microsoft just revealed their next version of Windows, and I have more questions than answers

So, it's official: contrary to what they'd said previously, Windows 10 will not be the last version of Windows that Microsoft releases. Windows 11 is definitely coming, it's definitely called Windows 11, and today we got a look at some of its sexier features.

First, the good ...

Windows 10 is very pretty. A lot of people, myself included, hated the flat, designed-for-touchscreens Windows 8, and while Windows 10 restored the start menu, it didn't fix the ugly look of the thing. Windows 11 was very clearly designed to mimic the much, much prettier Aero Glass UI of Windows Vista and Windows 7, and it's a huge improvement.

Gone, too, is the ugly "live tile" blue void that takes up space next to W10's start menu. Live tiles still exist, but Microsoft has renamed them to Widgets, and banished them to their own sub-menu; those who are interested can call up the Widget menu using the button on the task bar, and ignore it otherwise.

Windows Updates have apparently been improved as well, with smaller updates loading in the background, rather than shoving themselves to the fore and preventing users from doing anything else while the updates happen. They've also finally found a way to get some Android apps into the Windows Store, too, although it's the much, much smaller subset of Android apps that Amazon have on their app store.

... which brings us to the less-than-good ...

Two weeks later: Pop!_OS is still fine

It's been a couple of weeks now since I switched from Windows 7 to Linux. If you're thinking of making the switch yourself, and wondering what that's like, I feel like I've now got enough experience to tell you what you can expect.

Microsoft strikes again, flags anti-telemetry HOST file changes as malware

Microsoft does not have a great record when it comes to data collection. Starting with the release of Windows 10, when they insisted that they needed to collect essentially every possible kind of metadata from users in the name of maintaining the platform, only to later admit that at least half of that data collection wasn't necessary after all, Microsoft's built-in telemetry has been a pain point for privacy-conscious users for years.

Windows 10's telemetry system was a major contributor to the slow uptake of Windows 10, and Microsoft's later decision to add the same telemetry, retroactively, to Windows 8 and 7 as well was even harder to defend; neither older OS, after all, needed to be maintained in perpetuity the way Windows 10 did, and both were mature OSes and much more stable to begin with, so why did they need to harvest users' metadata? I'd still like to know; Microsoft never explained.

Naturally, Windows users generally, and Windows 7 users in particular, started looking for workarounds for Redmond's telemetry bullshit. Third party applications like Spybot's Anti-Beacon, or O&O ShutUp10, began to proliferate, turning off telemetry for users that cared enough to take steps to do so; meanwhile, Microsoft continued to ignore calls by data privacy advocates and activists to turn off the telemetry, or at least to allow all of their users to opt out.

Late last week, Microsoft finally responded. As reported by bleeping computer:

Since the end of July, Windows 10 users began reporting that Windows Defender had started detecting modified HOSTS files as a 'SettingsModifier:Win32/HostsFileHijack' threat.

When detected, if a user clicks on the 'See details' option, they will simply be shown that they are affected by a 'Settings Modifier' threat and has 'potentially unwanted behavior,' [...] it seems that Microsoft had recently updated their Microsoft Defender definitions to detect when their servers were added to the HOSTS file.

Users who utilize HOSTS files to block Windows 10 telemetry suddenly caused them to see the HOSTS file hijack detection.

I can attest to this not being restricted to Windows 10, or to Windows Defender; Microsft Security Essentials running on Windows 7 started exhibiting this same behaviour on my own system last Wednesday. Apparently, having already paid for the privilege of using Windows 7 or 8 is not enough; we're now expected to pay again, by allowing Microsoft to harvest our metadata, even though the operating systems themselves are either out-of-service, or approaching end-of-service.

So, what's a Windows 7 or 8 user to do? Well... personally, I switched to Linux.

Specifically, I switched to Pop!_OS, which seemed well-aligned with my game-centric use case. And while it's been a bit of a learning curve, I have to say that the experience of switching to Pop!_OS in 2020 was far less painful than my attempt to switch to Ubuntu in 2019. I won't say that it's been flawless, but it's been nearly flawless, and I won't be switching back.

Good job, Microsoft! You've finally manage to make using your products so unattractive that even a procrastinator like me has finally pulled the rip cord, and bailed on you. Sayonara, and good riddance!

If you're still on an older version of Windows, and wondering what to do next, I cannot recommend strongly enough that you make the shift to Linux. Don't accept an OS that acts like malware, or a giant corporate overlord who never listens to your concerns, and who does not care if you stay or go. Installing your new OS takes only minutes -- a far cry from my last Windows 7 install, which took hours, and even then needed me to install ethernet and graphics card drivers separately, along with hours' worth of updates, and OMG why didn't I do this years ago?

Time saved during OS installation leaves lots of time to acclimatize yourself to the new OS environment... which will still leave you lots of time to actually get back to using your PC. Seriously, I don't have a single regret, and I don't think you will, either. Give it a shot; you've got nothing to lose, except Microsoft's baggage.

More evidence in favour of a Linux Shift

Just days after posting about Linux's user market share increasing 233% in two months, I came across these two ZDnet stories, linked in a single post on Slashdot. In chronological order by publication:

1. Why Munich is shifting back from Microsoft to open source – again:

In a notable U-turn for the city, newly elected politicians in Munich have decided that its administration needs to use open-source software, instead of proprietary products like Microsoft Office.

"Where it is technologically and financially possible, the city will put emphasis on open standards and free open-source licensed software," a new coalition agreement negotiated between the recently elected Green party and the Social Democrats says.

The agreement was finalized Sunday and the parties will be in power until 2026. "We will adhere to the principle of 'public money, public code'. That means that as long as there is no confidential or personal data involved, the source code of the city's software will also be made public," the agreement states.

That story was quickly followed by:

2. Why Hamburg is now following Munich's lead:

The trend towards open-source software on government computers is gathering pace in Germany.

In the latest development, during coalition negotiations in the city-state of Hamburg, politicians have declared they are ready to start moving its civil service software away from Microsoft and towards open-source alternatives.

The declaration comes as part of a 200-page coalition agreement between the Social Democratic and Green parties, which will define how Hamburg is run for the next five years.

[...]

"With this decision, Hamburg joins a growing number of German states and municipalities that have already embarked on this path," said Peter Ganten, chairman of the Open Source Business Alliance, or OSBA, based in Stuttgart.

He's referring to similar decisions made in Schleswig-Holstein, Thuringia, Bremen, Dortmund, and Munich. But, he adds: "The Hamburg decision is nevertheless remarkable because the city has always been more aggressively oriented towards Microsoft."

Munich's decision to abandon open-sourced software solutions that they'd spent €100M in public funds to develop, was touted at the time by the anti-Linux crowd as evidence of Windows 10's clear dominance and superiority in the space. It defied all available evidence, as well as what was (at the time, anyway) a growing wave of Linux adoption by state organizations the world over, and may have derailed that adoption for years.

Linux Watch: June 2020 Edition

It's been a while since I last blogged about OS user market share numbers.

In large part, the absence was due to boredom. Very little was changing month to month; with Windows 10 having finally passed Windows 7 in user share, no other tech blogs were writing about the subject, either. MacOS and Linux were stealing users from Windows for a while, but that trend slowed, then stopped, and then reversed itself. Increasingly, it looked like the personal computing paradigm that we'd lived with for twenty years was about to cement itself in place for the next twenty.

But an odd thing has been happening over the last couple of months. Linux, which had retreated allthe was to 1.36% user share just a few months ago, has been gaining ground rapidly, erasing all of its user share losses of the past year and then some.

Nobody's ever going to call it that Microsoft continues terrible naming streak with XBox Series X, and the memes are already starting

From Kotaku:

That didn’t take long! The next-generation Xbox was announced last night, and people online already have nicknames for it.

In the English-speaking world, it’s either being called “Xbox Sex” or simply “Sex,” a shortening of “Series X.”

Of course, it's always possible that someone at Mircosoft saw this coming, and figured that it wouldn't be entirely negative for their new console to be called "The Sex," but given their long tradition of terrible console names, I somehow doubt it. And so "The Sex" will become the most awkward product name ever to be put on a child's Christmas wish list to Santa, right after the XBone. 

Hell, at least the XBox One X acronymized to XBOX; Series X is just a bizarre choice. And I don't want to hear about how they have multiple consoles planned for this generation, which is why they're all going to share that "Series" monniker. It's still confusing and weird, and can only serve to confuse consumers... and, occasionally, amuse them.

Yes, I forsee a lot of very strained birds and bees conversations between clueless videogame-seeking pre-teens and their suddenly-very-concerned parents, as to why their children are requesting "The Sex" for XMas. Another solid job done, Microsoft! GG!

Plus ça change...Microsoft proves, once again, that they refuse to learn from past mistakes

I had to shake my head at this report from betanews:

Windows 7 may be an aging operating system, but there are still plenty of individuals and organizations using it. With the end of support date of January 14 fast-approaching, Microsoft is getting twitchy and is eager for everyone to upgrade to Windows 10.

Having already started to notify Windows 7 hangers on that support is due to come to an end, the company is now ready to get a little more aggressive. If you haven't moved on from Windows 7, soon you will see full-screen notifications warning you that "your Windows 7 PC is out of support".

The messages are due to be displayed from the day after support ends. So when January 15 rolls around, anyone who has doggedly stuck with Windows 7 will find that they not only have no support and no security updates, but also that they are pestered by an invasive message delivered by a program called EOSnotify.exe.

[...]

The good news is that it will be possible to dismiss the message and opt to never see it again.

Where do I even start with this shit?

In case you missed it...

... Windows 10 finally managed to hit 50% market share, according to NetMarketShare.

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.

Steam continues to confound

If there's one thing about the OS market share numbers which has remained reliable from one month to the next, it's that Steam's numbers almost always move in the opposite direction from the OS market over all, and last month was no different. That's right -- Windows lost overall market share among Steam users, with MacOS and Linux both posting gains, all of which is backwards when compared to the broader OS marketplace.

As expected, Windows 10 continued to gain while other Windows versions lost ground, pretty much as one would expect given that gamers are the one group that continues to buy new PCs, all of which come with Win10 installed. I wasn't expecting MacOS and Linux to be gaining in popularity among Steam users, though; one can't help but wonder if Steam Play/Proton isn't playing a role there.

But I'll be honest: I have no real idea what this might mean, if anything. I'll keep watching, though, in the hope that some sort of clarity emerges from the statistical soup.

Watch this space...

Victory! Microsoft surrenders and PC users win

File under, "It's about fucking time," I guess.

As reported in Forbes:

Microsoft has a major announcement today: Windows 10 will no longer automatically install those big feature updates every six months. Home users can pause smaller updates, too. In fact, Windows will even let you pause updates after checking for them!

This is huge. It’s Microsoft’s biggest change in Windows strategy since the company released Windows 10. Microsoft is giving up on “Windows as a service” that is automatically updated outside of your control.

[...]

Microsoft is giving us—and PC users—a lot of what we asked for here! We said Windows wasn’t a service and Microsoft should give PC users more choice. We called for Microsoft to test updates more thoroughly than the botched October 2018 Update, which deleted some people’s files and had other bugs. We warned people not to click “Check for Updates”because Microsoft would treat you as a “seeker” and force updates on your PC before they had gone through testing. We said Home users should get more control over updates, including the ability to pause updates when desired.

Microsoft's insistence on treating Windows 10 Home users like guinea pigs was one of the most contentious issues that still plagued the OS, and was a big part of the reason that I decided to switch to Linux instead. I'm still switching to Linux instead, of course; Microsoft's belated move in the direction of what they should always have done with the OS is just too little, too late, at least for me. But for the millions of Windows 10 users who felt like they had no choice but to adopt Microsoft's new OS, or who were switched after repeatedly refusing the "upgrade," this is definitely good news.

A new normal?

It's the first of a new month, which means that NetMarketShare's new OS market share numbers are out, and the predictable drumbeat of the coverage is all about how Windows 10 is gaining at Windows 7's expense.... even though Windows 10 gained more than Windows 7 lost last month. Never underestimate the extent of tech media's devotion to the pre-established narrative, I guess.

The reality of the current numbers, however, looks a little different to me. To me, it looks like Windows 7 is holding on remarkably well for an OS that's due to officially exit support in only 9 more months, continuing to be the OS of choice on 36.5% of the planets personal computers. That's not 36.5% of Windows PCs, mind, but of PCs overall, a remarkable feat considering that its successor's successor OS was released nearly four years ago, and was free for three and half of those years. To me, the fact that Windows 10 is still only 43.6% of the OS market looks more like a sign foretelling a long, Windows XP-like life for the older OS.

Let's be real, though; "Ten-year-old OS loses market share to four-year-old OS" is basically a dog bites man story. It's expected, and would be dead boring if not for the fact that it's happening a lot more slowly than expected... which is also boring. The more interesting story of the past year has been the movements in the overall OS market.

Microsoft's mixed messaging Windows 7 users to get GWX upgrade nag screens again... and also DirectX 12. WTF, MSFT?

Before we get started, I just want to point out that Microsoft announced both of these Windows 7 developments on the same day.

First, from The Inquirer:

THE NAGS are back, and we're not talking about the invasion of the killer horses that we dreamt about after a particularly cheeky late-night cheeseboard.

Microsoft has confirmed that starting next month, Windows 7 users will start to see pop-ups warning them that their beloved operating system is reaching end of life on 14th January 2020.

This will send shudders of resigned recognition to all those who lived through the saga of nag screens that plagued Windows 7 and 8.x users when Windows 10 was rolled out as a free upgrade and made it very difficult to opt out.

The good news is that these "courtesy reminders" contain some learnings gained from that whole debacle, with a promise that this time you'll see far fewer, and that there'll be a definite "don't remind me again" checkbox to get rid of them.

And then, from The Verge:

Microsoft is making a very surprising addition to Windows 7 this week, with the support of DirectX 12 for the nearly 10-year-old operating system. While Windows 7 support will end in less than a year and Microsoft will start sending notifications to PCs next month, the company is allowing some game developers to implement DirectX 12. The first game to appear with DirectX 12 support on Windows 7 is Blizzard’s World of Warcraft.

Microsoft heard feedback from Blizzard that features like multi-threading in DirectX 12 were bringing substantial framerate improvements to World of Warcraft on Windows 10. Blizzard wanted these same features on Windows 7, presumably because it still has a large base of players on this older OS. Microsoft originally launched DirectX 12 as part of Windows 10, and has not made it available for Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 users.

This is just baffling, even for Microsoft. I can see bringing the new Chromium/Edge browser to Windows 7; Microsoft have a significant number of large-volume license-holders to whom they're trying to sell additional years of Windows 7 support ($300 USD per PC for three years, and only if you have a volume license), so adding new functionality to the platform for them makes a certain amount of sense. But WoW players? In a year in which they're trying desperately to convert individual Windows 7 users into Windows 10 Home (or Pro) users, for Microsoft to be giving those same individual W7 users additional reasons not to switch makes no obvious sense.

Oh, and these same PC gamers, who've mostly rejected both of Microsoft's ecosystems, i.e. Windows 10 and XBox Live? Microsoft has more goodies in the bag for them, too, even if they don't play WoW.

Windows 7 gained market share last month, while everybody else lost ground.Seriously, WTAF?

OK, I'll admit it... I have no idea what's going on with OS market share trends this year.

Last year seemed to have a clear pattern. With few exceptions, Windows consistently lost share each month to MacOS and Linux, with Chrome staying steady. This year, though, Windows is growing while everyone else has started to slip. That would seem to be the perfect story for Microsoft, who have been waiting for Windows 10 to finally start taking over the desktop/laptop OS market for years, and for tech punditry, who have mostly been expecting business and government deployments to finally make that happen as Windows 7 winds down to end-of-service in January of 2020.

But that's not what we see happening. Instead, Windows 10 is slowly sliding along with all over OS versions, while Windows 7 and 8.1 together posted gains that are strong enough to raise Windows' overall user market share of the desktop/laptop space. It's demented... and yet, it's also happening.

So, what the actual fuck is actually happening?

Comparing last month's numbers with this month's, by same OS version.

I could understand if some Windows 10 users were rolling back to Windows 7, or if some newly-minted Linux users had switched back to Windows 7 - after all, I've done that before, my own self.

But it's not just Windows 10 and/or Linux that are being cannibalized by Windows 7; according to NetMarketShare's numbers, MacOS users are also switching to Windows 7, apparently having already spent the Apple Tax to buy their (expensive) new Macs.

Only one possible explanation occurs to me, and I have no idea whether it's reasonable or not. I'm starting to wonder whether NetMarketShare's are being skewed by something which they themselves claimed to have dealt with before: botnets.

Microsoft gets petty with Windows 7 users

As of the end of December, 36.90% of all desktop and laptop users (not just Windows users, mind, but PC users in general) had spent three and a half years actively rejecting Windows 10. This isn't like OS version transitions of years past, where people on the old version might just be procrastinating; thanks to the egregious excesses of the GWX campaign, all of the people who didn't care enough to actively do something were switched to Windows 10 already. No, current-day Windows 7 users are the ones who did care, and who took steps to remain on their OS of choice.

Not only have Windows 7 users actively rejected Windows 10, but many of them appear to be actively rejecting Windows entirely, with MacOS and Ubuntu Linux gaining market share at Windows' expense for most of the last year: Windows gained user market share only in March and July of last year, losing market share in every other month of 2018 for a total loss of 2.31%,with MacOS gaining 1.63% and Linux gaining 0.66% over the same time period. Microsoft set out to change the paradigm of personal computing with Windows 10, and clearly succeeded, but not in the way they wanted; rather than making Windows 10 into the new paradigm, they seem to be ushering in an era in which Windows no longer dominates on the desktop.

And so Microsoft, being Microsoft, have responded to this slow-motion exodus by giving Windows 7 users yet another reason to dump Windows, without giving them any clear new reason to adopt Windows 10 in place. Because of course they have.

Windows lost more Steam, too

In case you were still thinking that Windows' 0.83% user market share drop in December was some sort of an error, Steam's Software Survey has corroborated the decline, putting Steam in sync with the overall OS market for a second straight month.

Click to enlarge.

Once again, MacOS (a.k.a. OS X) and Linux were the big gainers, with MacOS 10.14 and Ubuntu 18.10 both showing strong results; the newbie-friendly Linux Mint, a distro that doesn't even register among OS users in the broader marketplace, appears to have gained a significant share among Steam users. Weirdly, only Windows 7's 64-bit version lost Steam users, with Win7's 32-bit version gaining ground alongside all other Windows versions except XP; Win7 64-bit's decline was enough to put Windows in the red overall, though, with a 0.58% overall drop which is only slightly slower than the decline seen in the overall OS market.

In isolation, this sort of behaviour among Steam users could be interpreted as resulting from Valve's Steam Play/Proton initiative, but given that Windows' decline among Steam users is actually less than that seen in the larger OS market, it's difficult to describe this as anything other than just a part of the overall trend, with Windows-dependent PC gamers actually lagging slightly behind everyone else. Whether Steam Play/Proton changes those users' decision-making calculus in the coming months is, of course, anyone's guess. It does seem to be making it somewhat easier for gamers to join the shift away from Windows, though, meaning that Microsoft shouldn't be counting too hard on PC gamers to be a backstop against the overall loss of Windows users.

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.

Microsoft makes it official

After word leaked yesterday that Microsoft was redesigning their Edge browser to use Google's Chromium engine "under the hood," Windows-watchers were left wondering just how long Microsoft would make everyone wait before actually acknowledging this shift publicly. The answer, apparently, was one day.

As reported by VentureBeat:

Microsoft today embraced Google’s Chromium open source project for Edge development on the desktop. The company also announced it is decoupling the browser updates from Windows 10 updates, and that Edge is coming to all supported versions of Windows and to macOS. [...] The first preview builds of the Chromium-powered Edge will arrive in early 2019, according to Microsoft.

[...]

Microsoft hopes moving to Chromium will “create better web compatibility for our customers” and “less fragmentation of the web for all web developers.” The former is certainly true, as the Edge web platform will thus become aligned with web standards and other Chromium-based browsers. The latter is not true in the short term (plenty of testing will be needed to accommodate the switch) but it is likely in the long term, as developers will have one fewer browser to explicitly test against.

Windows is losing Steam

It looks like the downward trend in Windows' overall market share is also being mirrored in Steam's software survey numbers, as reported by Phoronix:

Valve has published their latest monthly Steam survey data, which shows an increase in the Linux gaming population.

For November 2018, Steam's Survey reports a 0.80% marketshare for Linux, which is a 0.08% increase over October, which was on an upward trend following the roll-out of Steam Play late this summer for allowing Windows-only games to run more easily on Linux with their Wine-based Proton software... Earlier this year it was around just 0.5% Linux marketshare and last year there were the lows of around 0.3%.

While 0.80% may not seem like much, it's significant when factoring in the size of Steam's customer base that is reportedly at 125+ million users. 

Not only is Linux up, MacOS is also up, and Windows is down, in a rare case of Steam users actually trending in the same direction as the market overall.

There's a lot of overlap between Steam's user base and the PC gaming community overlap, and their higher Windows 10 adoption rate, and higher PC purchasing rate, were helping to drive Windows 10's numbers upwards. Windows 10 is still pushing out Windows 7 among PC gamers, but with more PC gamers shifting from Windows to Mac OS X and Linux because of Steam Play, this shift among the most active PC purchasers could be a significant driver of the overall market shift away from Linux.

Importantly, MacOS X and Steam are both consumer-driven market segments, which could mean that Microsoft is losing consumers to both Apple and FOSS. Back in July, Microsoft had talked about their desire to win back consumers with Modern Life Services. We've heard nothing about that consumer-focused initiative since, and if this trend in Windows' market share is any indication, Microsoft's time could be starting to run out. Windows has a healthy lead in PC gaming, though, with a 96.00% market share, so there's still time for Microsoft to react... if they start now.

Tick, tock, Microsoft. Your move.