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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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 minute ago

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I began using Windows in 1992. I switched to MacOS this year and I'm never going back.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

As someone who has had to use Windows, OSX and Linux as a daily driver at different points, OSX was by far the most challenging to work with. Every few months something broke. Fully on Linux now.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 minute ago

As someone who has used Windows, OSX, and Linux as a daily driver at different points, Windows was by far the most challenging to work with. Every week there was some problem.

In recent years, my company provided Dell with 32GB of memory running Windows would blue screen practically weekly. Most of the time it struggled to run more than one instance of an IDE. Windows finally crashed to the point that the only option was restore the OS.

I requested a different machine and have been running macOS with less memory. Have actually been able to run more IDE instances than the Windows machine would run. No crashes.

Completely Unix based OSes now. Linux servers. Linux desktops. Mac laptops.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 hours ago

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

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

Where are they going? There's no way it's Linux, right? So I guess it's Mac?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 hours ago

It's kind of linux. Also kind of mac. They're going to android and ios.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 hours ago

Phones and tablets. The younger generations are only using those for the most part.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 hours ago

I’m thinking they’re doing it on purpose. Think you’re a multibazillion company, want to quit your least profitable line of work (OS business) but it’s also your most famous front. Diluting a business is how you quit without scaring investors.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Enshittification will do that, yep

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago (3 children)

I just wish Linux remote desktop support wasn't absolute dogshit.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

RustDesk, it's by far the best remote desktop software I've used on any platform.

Tons of great features, open source, self-hostable, easy to install and configure, works on all major platforms including mobile. Cross platform works like a charm.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago

Thanks. I’ll give it a try.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

It really isn't. You don't even need to port forward, you can use AnyDesk or TeamViewer or any other option entirely for free. There are also open-source options too.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I’ve used them all. They all suck.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

How so? They work fine on me between laptop and desktop, phone and desktop, etc.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

They work well enough to get by, but definitely lack the responsiveness and modern feel of Windows rdp. Which makes sense, given the Linux solutions are essentially sending screen caps vs rdp's protocols.

It feels like using a raspberry pi as your workstation. Technically it can do it, but it’s not a great experience. It feels like when you’re in a video chat app, and someone using screen share gives you keyboard/mouse control.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

I had luck with VNC, although it's still worse than RDP. There's also some RDP implementations on Linux that are apparently better, but VNC works well enough for me.
But there's no sound, I don't know if RDP has that. I've used VLC for sound forwarding. I also tried PulseAudio TCP module, but that didn't quite work. With VLC I can do lossy compression.

What I wish would work better is X11 forwarding. That could be so awesome, just having the remote windows local-like. But from what I can find, in the past, programs used X11's drawing features which would save a lot of bandwidth, while now they just draw pixel by pixel.

To give you some idea, I've tried it on LAN with gigabit ethernet, ping below 1ms. It would saturate the port and still be kinda slow.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

There are plenty of options for both software and OS, so not every combination is going to have the same level of support as Windows, where every user gets the same experience.

That said, I've heard lots of good things about NoMachine.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago

I used NoMachine for the better part of a year, and I’d agree it’s the best of the options. It still sucks.

[–] [email protected] 67 points 7 hours ago (4 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 16 minutes 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.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

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

At some point, it just becomes exhausting to hear people explain-o-brag about their ability to navigate the command-line, like typing "dir" into a cursor field makes them the hottest thing since Alan Turing.

Millennials will tell you they are tech geniuses, then throw up their hands when their dishwasher breaks or their check-oil light comes on. The need to be cluelessly smug rivals any 90s-era Boomer.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Looks around my living room, 3 laptops, stationary, 1 nas and a server. 2 laptops are still running windows.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 hours ago

You are an outlier.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (2 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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 hours ago

I don't think their obnoxious behavior is completely unrelated. After all, people aren't choosing windows phones or tablets either.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 hours ago

Correct. Whenever you see a large chunk of the population making a change, first assume it is for mundane reasons like finances or convenience.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 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.

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