this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2025
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Microsoft EVP Yusuf Mehdi said in a blog post last week that Windows powers over a billion active devices globally. This might sound like a healthy number, but according to ZDNET, the Microsoft annual report for 2022 said that more than 1.4 billion devices were running Windows 10 or 11. Given that these documents contain material information and have allegedly been pored over by the tech giant’s lawyers, we can safely assume that Windows’ user base has been quietly shrinking in the past three years, shedding around 400 million users.

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[–] Notamoosen@lemmy.zip 4 points 7 hours ago

I wonder how cloud accessibility plays into this. In the past if I had a dedicated windows app I might typically have maybe a hundred windows desktops accessing onsite servers. Nowadays I can replace that with thin clients and cloud based RDSH servers.

[–] Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works 20 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

What a well earned drop. They keep forcing their bullshit on us, of course we're interested in other OS's as a result.

I do use windows for most things, but my servers will never run anything but Linux at this point.

[–] AlphaOmega@lemmy.world 9 points 8 hours ago

Funny thing. Back in the day, and possibly today, all windows Hotmail/Livemail servers were Linux.

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 92 points 15 hours ago (6 children)

Everyone talking about how it's because of Windows 11 or their greed driving people away, etc. But they're ignoring the big one:

People don't need as many computers these days. You don't have a lot of households with a laptop for every member of the family because smartphones and tablets have replaced the PC for many people for media consumption and basic tasks.

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmings.world 10 points 8 hours ago

Exactly. My wife hasn't used an actual computer more than a handful of times in the last several years. She does EVERYTHING on her smartphone.

I have never owned a laptop, because my desktop unit is where I do most of my business stuff, and when I'm away from that, my smartphone is good enough.

Of course, the most important thing isn't that we account for two less computers than a few years ago, but the smartphones that we have replaced laptops with, run Android. So that's actually a net loss of 4 MS products.

And after all these years, Windows products still make me frustrated and infuriated. You'd think they would have honed it to a perfect product by now, but every few years they completely reconfigure the UI, and make us have to navigate a whole new, buggy system.

[–] paraphrand@lemmy.world 22 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I keep having to remind people around me that phones are the primary computing device for an ever increasing percentage of the population.

Lemmy wants to rail on Windows 11 AND they talk shit about your average person not understanding filesystems.

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[–] OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca 39 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (5 children)

I think you're right on this. People aren't moving away from MS because of their obnoxious behaviour. They're moving to alternate form factors and dealing with Apple's and Google's obnoxious behaviour instead. People are willing to put up with a metric ton of bullshit so they don't have to actually do anything for themselves.

[–] jjlinux@lemmy.ml 2 points 6 hours ago

And this is the absolute truth. I showed my brother today in haveibeenpawned how his main email (you guessed it, Gmail) is out there in over 150 leaks and hacks. Not 2 hours later he was buying 2 new nest thermostats to replace the ones he has at home because Google is phasing them out (yes, they still work, Google just chose to kill them).

I'm done trying to make people see the light. We'll see what happens when it all blows up (see I didn't say "if").

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[–] cantstopthesignal@sh.itjust.works 54 points 16 hours ago (5 children)

The search function has never been the same since vista. I'm not doing a web search from the search bar. I am specifically searching for files on my computer. F-off. And now I'm constantly asked to save to some cloud I don't give a shit about.

[–] JeremyHuntQW12@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

It never worked for me, wouldn't find a file on the directory it was searching.

[–] Krompus@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

FYI you can disable that, but yes it’s a shitty new default.

After a blissful decade on Arch Linux, stock Windows enrages me, takes hours to make it somewhat bearable.

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[–] sibachian@lemmy.ml 9 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

windows dying doesn't help. they are on a shopping spree buying every AAA game that tencent haven't already bought.

[–] Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 8 hours ago (1 children)
[–] dzsimbo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

Let's wait 'til the shopping spree is over and break them the fuck up <3

[–] Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Prevention is always better than a cure

[–] dzsimbo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 hours ago

I don't disagree, but unhappy to report I have the same power over either outcome.

[–] Sillyglow@lemmy.ca 40 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Forcing people to buy a new computer for nothing more than a security chip on the motherboard will do that

[–] NotANumber@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 16 hours ago

They also had pretty strict CPU requirements. Mostly only 8th gen and newer, or a ryzen, would be required.

[–] Suavevillain@lemmy.world 30 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Just pure greed and giving users less and less control of an OS will push people away. It did for me outside of work. I don't have any reason to touch Windows that often.

[–] blarghly@lemmy.world 12 points 15 hours ago (3 children)

It's because most people use their phones as their main computing device these days. The idea that the average person would give up the convenience, stability, and familiarity of something like windows because of "pure greed" and "loss of OS control" is a fantasy. The average person would buy a screwdriver with banner ads if it saved them $10.

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[–] WhyYesZoidberg@lemmy.world 20 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

Enshittification will do that, yep

[–] skisnow@lemmy.ca 74 points 19 hours ago (3 children)

We're in the process of moving to Linux in our company, entirely because of how aggressively awful Windows 11 is. We'd have been perfectly happy staying on Windows 10 forever, but last week our head of development woke up to discover that Windows 10 had spontaneously chosen to "upgrade" itself during the night without him agreeing to it.

[–] ServeTheBeam@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago

What distro is your company going with?

[–] nossaquesapao@lemmy.eco.br 24 points 16 hours ago

Wish you success in the migration

[–] Auth@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

How do you manage a fleet of linux devices and stay up to date with compliance?

[–] skisnow@lemmy.ca 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Not entirely sure what you mean; Linux’s user management, access control, security etc has always been ahead of Windows’ for its whole existence.

[–] Auth@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago

On the server side I can agree, but linux does not get device drivers for majority of hardware let alone regular device driver updates. That fact alone makes the entire company un-compliant in many industries.

You could get an entire fleet of linux supported laptops and get then compliance becomes easier to manage since the software on linux lends well to sys admin fleet control. You would have to push patches weekly to the fleet which would result in a ton of random user bugs.

[–] DetectiveNo64@lemmy.ca 13 points 15 hours ago

I'll be joining soon enough, going to dual boot with Linux. Only keeping windows for games that won't work on Linux.

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 46 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

good. fuck. microsoft.

they had the choice of not being fucking awful and they had no reason to. im glad its crumbling for them even if wayyy too late.

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