Seme though. What are the odds the increase in Mac sales just correlate to old Intel Mac users finally upgrading to AS?

I use Windows for one reason only: Steam and best performance and compatibility for high resolution gaming.

If I didn’t want that, I wouldn’t be on windows at all.

The issue I have with Linux is that it’s 2025 and every single time I’ve created a Linux system in the past ten years, I have some sort of issue that I spend too much of my time figuring out. I am married, have three school age children, and have hobbies and I volunteer regularly. One of those hobbies is not “figuring out how to make Linux work.”

The downside of open source is you have to have the time to fix it yourself, and that lack of time is what keeps me from pursuing Linux, even though I am absolutely furious at the crap Microsoft is pulling lately, from shutting off ability to create a local account, to forcing OneDrive, to throwing Ads onto the desktop, to the telemetry and marketing spyware that is now standard on Windows 11.

I have been hearing evangelism since Windows XP days, when DX 10 drivers were Vista only, when driver model changed, when Windows 8 went to WinRT, when Windows 10 introduced telemetry, when....

In the end, Valve had to come up with Proton.

Signed ex-FOSS zealot.

Of all of the things that are a challenge on Linux, UEFI isnt one of them. I'm curious what you mean.

The term might come up in Linux distro installers but the ones I have used recently all handle it fine (Arch, Debian, Fedora). Secure boot is even supported without hassle by all the major distributions. Once Linux is installed the user definitely doesn't need to care about the pre-OS boot firmware.

We hang out in different circles because a surprising number of my non-tech worker PC using friends are trying out Linux and liking it. The only thing holding most of my friends back at this point is kernel anti cheat.

So 2025 is going to be the “Year of Linux on the Desktop”?

> GNU/Linux as a whole has never been in better shape to catch users fleeing from Windows

It’s still in really bad shape, from a consumer perspective.

They're right here and are organizing campaigns to switch to Linux: https://endof10.org/

Did you even look before you threw out a lazy negative post?

The “Linux demographics” were a bunch of 20-30 year olds who are now 40-50.

Same with the “Free Software” crowd - those 20-30 year olds are now 50-60.

Aging demographics that broadly failed to attract any interest from the next generation. Honestly though, why join? There’s nothing inherently attractive about either community. Hang out with toxic gamers on Discord and join a team, or hang out with toxic old nerds still on IRC for ideological purity. I know which one wins. Even professionally, I’d rather join a model train community.

But PC sales are rising too so it's misleading.

Despite what both Apple and Microsoft are saying, no one is buying personal computers to run AI on.

For kicks I put Windows 11 on one of my retro laptops - a dell e6500 with 8gb of ram and it ran super well. I don't think it meets the tpm v2 requirements but it's wild we can't virtualize a decent tpm.

All depends on what Microsoft allows - my Thinkpad with a Ryzen 2500u Pro has a TPM but they blanket blocked "Ryzen 2500" because the non pro doesn't always have a TPM.

Was in the market for a Linux laptop for son who's entering college.... Dug through lenovo and saying that it's hard to find decent info on Linux support is an understatement...

Finally got an e14 g6 AMD.... It's not supported by lenovo for Linux but everything got Auto detected and worked except fingerprint

The bummer: suspend to ram is terribly broken and for a laptop that's a deal breaker

Yeah I'm aware of framework and system 76... They aren't here. The pricier lenovo options exist but at that point is just go with a mac

Ubuntu is an easy transition for older folks more comfortable with Windows XP through Windows 7. The desktop experience is much more familiar than Windows 11, and they aren't getting spammed with ads for Microsoft services and AI slop that they're skeptical of and not interested in.

You are misunderstanding. It's not I don't want Windows 11.

For example, I have a pretty good gaming PC that plays Grand Theft Auto V at 4K and Elden Ring on low settings.

It no longer gets security updates. Microsoft has made the arbitrary policy that this hardware is too old simply because it doesn't have TPM 2.0 Secure Boot, and a certain generation of Intel or AMD CPU. They have decided it should go to a landfill.

Of course, I am more skilled than the average person, so I easily installed a hack to bypass these hardware requirements and get Windows 11 installed anyway. So I get security updates. But it's a matter of principle that I shouldn't have to use a hack.

Also, a lot of these comments are misunderstanding the question. Recall, Copilot, and ads are not the reason most of these people are opting for Mac instead of Windows 11. It's because they cannot install it legitimately at all. Microsoft said you have to buy new hardware, so they're buying new hardware.

I object mostly to Microsoft's pushiness. At every turn, they're trying to nudge/coerce the user to do this and to do that.

Example: "You should make a Microsoft account!" -> "You really need to make a Microsoft account." -> "Here's a full-screen Window begging you to make a Microsoft account, with a tiny skip button." -> "Here's a full-screen Window demanding you to make a Microsoft account, and if you want to skip it, you need to reboot and do this without a network connection." -> "You're going to make a Microsoft account if you want to use your computer. Just do it, asshole. (command line workaround)" -> "OK, fuckface, we tried the easy way, now we punish you with the hard way. Make that fucking Microsoft account whether you want it or not. I'm not fucking around anymore. YOU HAVE TO DO IT."

You can see this progression with basically all of their unwanted features.

I'm sure there will be many opinions, but here's mine.

Win10 came with the computer that I chose for home use because it was a cheap refurb with a touch screen. It's fine. My workplace has switched to Win11 and it seems fine. I'm practically ambivalent about the "platform wars" because I rarely interact with the OS.

I've read about issues such as: Growing amounts of telemetry. Requiring people to have a Microsoft account. Switching to subscription models for software.

But I think a serious issue is that there's a lot of hardware out there, that's not technically obsolete, but won't run Win11 for whatever reason. Being forced to upgrade your hardware opens up your choices, and now this brings Apple into play. I'm in this boat, though for me, Ubuntu may also be in play. If I have to give up my touch screen, my options open up a lot.

At my workplace, we were a Dell-only shop for many years, but now we offer either Dell or Apple. Even if only a percentage of people decide it's time to try Apple, that's still a lot of computers. Maybe something has changed that made it easier for corporate IT (at a F500 multinational) to support both platforms. My cube mate has a MacBook.

Windows used to be software you bought, and could use with a decent amount of control (obviously not at the level of linux). Windows 11 is a front-end to advertise Microsoft's cloud services. There are ads for them (and also other ads) throughout the OS, and you can't really easily escape the nudges to use them. It also needlessly removes a variety of customizability that has existed for decades; the taskbar is locked to the bottom of the screen, for example, while you could move it to the left/right/top of the screen on all Windows versions since 95.

Being forced to use 11 at work convinced me to finally move to Linux at home. And for context, I was an early adopter of Vista, and remain a defender of it.

The start menu is now written in Javascript and horrifically slow.

For a lot of people it's no different from the upgrade from Windows 7, they just don't want change.

The privacy invasions grew in Window 11 and the advertisement of Microsoft products increased quite a bit. The start menu now works better (opens every time you press the button, which I had issues with on Windows 10). Many people didn't get a choice to upgrade, which also pissed people off.

For the more technical-minded, the mandatory Microsoft account also pissed a lot of people off. Haven't heard any complaints about that from people who can't name a preferred Linux distro, though.

It's full of little quirks and annoyances in my experience. I find it gives me random problems a lot more often than Win10 or Linux gave me. Wifi connectivity, unable to wake from sleep, video playback causing flashes. Nothing constant but all frequent enough for me to really feel disappointed and annoyed. Windows 10 was absolutely rock solid for me.

I don't particularly like the UI redesign but that's low on the list of problems. And I haven't been blasted with ads and AI things as other people report but maybe that stuff is all in the Home edition.

I don't need a whole paragraph just: Copilot+ Recall.

They fiddled with the UI and people don't necessarily like it, including the loss of some features. A Microsoft account is now mandatory and they replaced the default local folders (docs, pictures, videos, etc...) with OneDrive.

Hardware-wise a TPM is now mandatory, which means a lot of systems that could otherwise run it fine are locked out.

It offers no tangible improvement or new features over Windows 10 but uses 2x the computing power.

You must connect to the internet and connect your Microsoft account. There used to be a workaround using console commands, but that was removed recently.

Without a cloud account, you are stuck on the OOBE setup screen.

Copilot, ads, shit, copilot, telemetry, forced MS accounts, copilot, forced ms edge, copilot, forced obsolescence, copilot. I might be missing some other stuff like copilot and clean of shit versions like ltsc, but those are on the top of my head.

It's not already on my computer, and changing that will cost me money and time and is something that Microsoft promised we wouldn't have to do anymore when they sold us on 10.

Ads everywhere.

One word: Ads

No respect for the user at all

Microsoft promised 10 was the last.

>Windows 10 came out more than X years ago.

You're framing this completely wrong. I have a gaming PC that runs Elden Ring, but it lacks TPM 2.0, Secure Boot, and the right generation of CPU from Intel or AMD. So Windows 11 literally cannot be legitimately installed. And now, Windows 10 is being purposely left with security holes. Microsoft is dictating that an Elden Ring‑capable gaming PC belongs in a landfill. Does that not sound absolutely ludicrous to you? Microsoft is free to obliterate its compatibility and shun its customer base if it wants to. That's its right. But whoever has convinced you that TPM 2.0 is so important that millions of gaming PCs should be turned into zombie‑virus‑infested abandonware—sorry, I just do not sympathize. The fact that there’s a third‑party hack to flip the bit that requires TPM 2.0 just proves that Microsoft could fix this situation with no effort whatsoever.

First, they released it only 10 years ago, and second, Microsoft marketed it as the last windows version. So yes, this is a own goal)

Three other comments are dunking on the OP writing "Windows 10 came out more than 20 years ago". It's probably a typo for "10 years ago" and OP is comparing it by saying Apple does 7-8 years.

Must be insider information. I thought Windows 10 came out 10 years ago.

The problem for me is the 11 interface is rubbish. It seems badly designed and unfinished. Everything was just shuffled around with no thought to usability. There is a limit to the number of icons on the start menu. The taskbar works differently in arbitrary ways and has less features than 10.

Windows 10 didnt come 20 years ago. You work for Microsoft and didnt know this? Win 10 was released in 2015 fyi

Are you ai? Windows 10 is a decade old.

Both can be true. w10 eol can drive sales of new hardware and a subset can be using the opportunity to switch to Mac.

Clicking through the link, both Macs and PCs are up. And Intel can even be upset it's not more of an Intel mix, so all of that can be true at the same time.

Where are you seeing support until 2038? I see support until 2027.

Even if it was 2038, Win10 LTSC only supports hardware from the time it was originally released. That might or might not be a problem today, but it definitely will be problematic long before 2038.

My understanding is that this is limited and only to one year? Next year will be back to square one.

But OS bugs don't matter as long as people can "engage" with the notification to subscribe to Apple TV+, or their new Apple Intelligence AI thingy.

(the payment process itself will likely fail with random obscure errors after being prompted for your Apple password the 10th time though)

What makes you think they weren’t detected? I’ve never heard of a company that fixed everything before a release

Same for me, it has been rock solid (just like all the recent macOS releases).