Bonum Certa Men Certa

Windows Down in the Largest Countries, Microsoft Cannot Dodge This Reality Forever

posted by Roy Schestowitz on May 03, 2025,
updated May 03, 2025

Microsoft sabotage has stopped working

Talking about "clown" and "hey hi" (AI) - sometimes "Quantum" - is like telling bedtime stories to infantile investors who don't understand those buzzwords

In the coming days we'll debunk some false claims made by Microsoft. There were several Big Lies told and spread this past week. The media seems ever so eager to spread lies and never scrutinise the lies told for hype's sake [1, 2]. One very prominent example is only days old (IBM's debt exploding out of control while it falsely asserts it'll "invest" in the US more money than the company is "worth"). Singing lullabies to the Dear Leader and to gullible shareholders.

So how is Windows doing anyway?

"The top line number from Valve for the Linux marketshare is 2.27% for April," Phoronix notes. That's DRM and gaming, not the full picture. Windows used to dominate almost 100% of this market segment. And now? Even PewDiePie moves away.

As we showed yesterday, in the EU's largest economies GNU/Linux is up sharply. It's not just in Europe. Consider South America, including Brazil.

From February: statCounter: GNU/Linux Reaches New All-Time Highs in Brazil and Argentina, Android Has Reached 60% in South America

From March: GNU/Linux Reaches 5% in Brazil, an All-Time High According to statCounter

And this morning:

Operating System Market Share Brazil

For desktops/laptops:

Desktop Operating System Market Share Brazil

Moreover, it seems like in recent months Brazilians moved to GNU/Linux more than to Vista 11.

Microsoft without Windows cannot remain the size that it is now.

"I doubt anyone's going to want a $1500 Windows laptop with a $400-500 Trump tax on it," Ryan says. "So they're screwed. Most of those Windows laptops have notoriously bad firmware problems. They never seem to last long before Windows stuffs itself and you're lucky if you can even re-install it somehow. But then they cut off support unpredictably or make you update to some new version you don't want that has more bad stuff in it."

Microsoft leveraged UEFI to vandalise GNU/Linux PCs. It's gonna have to pay for it.

People are losing faith in laptops (or desktops) with UEFI. They don't trust what's happening.

"I haven't had a single UEFI system that's worked right," Ryan adds. "The firmware, that is. You can probably remove Windows if you try hard enough but some of the problems follow you over to Linux because they're part of the firmware. If you try to update the firmware, you're spinning the cylinder with one bullet in there somewhere, and that's the one that kills the laptop. So if it's not doing something absolutely unbearable *and* in warranty, you leave it alone. You can end up having so many more problems than you do by not upgrading it. My Chromebook just takes care of this for me, I don't even have to think about it. It does not use UEFI. I haven't had any real problems with this computer, which is probably the first time I could say that since PCs shipped with legacy BIOS, where like 9 out of 10 of those worked fine, and that's not so bad compared to UEFI."

All this complexity won't salvage the monopoly; it can urge people to flock to alternatives.

Ryan concludes with: "Legacy BIOS was even better, because you could just boot into FreeDOS and update the firmware there without any of those Windows Flasher things. Complete garbage. Windows freezes up and stutters around and you hope that the next thing that doesn't happen is that it just locks the last thing it printed to the screen, rev the fan up, and have the main board die. You can't do that with UEFI, boot to DOS and just do the update. So it's much much worse. If the only thing that the Macs and Chromebooks give the user is they don't have to deal with UEFI anymore that's almost worth everything else all by itself. Lots of things the Chromebook does are not absolutely insane (like Windows is) because they don't hire idiots and they haven't been around so long that their OS is full of "Because forty years ago..." And all that adds up, you know. In Windows it adds up."

Chromebooks are gaining this month. In some countries ChromeOS is now at over 10%. We named some in IRC.

Ryan comments on this: "I've run into so many things my Chromebook does (I have a plus model, so it's all decked out.) where I'm like "Oh cool! I'll bet people at Google made it do this because they actually use it and don't want to be annoyed all the time." I wonder if anyone at Microsoft actually uses Windows and just deals with all the firmware bugs, ransomware, OS stuffing itself at least once a year, running hot, you know all that. I don't think there's dogfooding at Microsoft. I think they go home and use something else from the looks of it. If you use your own product eventually you fix the things that annoy you and it doesn't do that anymore. There's a threshold where you encounter that problem so many times that you'll fix it just so that won't happen to you anymore."

Rupert Goodwins published the following 5 days ago:

Windows isn't an OS, it's a bad habit that wants to become an addiction

Think that next refresh is going to get better? The first step to freedom is admitting there's a problem

Windows is at that awkward stage any global empire has to go through. Around one in five of the world population is a Windows user – 1.5 billion humans. Aside from the relatively small slice that Mac takes, everyone else is happy with smartphones, so until we make contact with credulous aliens, there are no new worlds for Microsoft to conquer. In an industry obsessed with growth, this is untenable.

It gets worse. For almost all of the existing user base, Windows 10 is perfectly fine, so Windows 11 has to be forced down their gullets at gunpoint. You cannot have a fifth of humanity pinned like a moth collection to your desktop and not monetize them. This has led, as Dave Plummer notes, to an OS that's both tool and adversary, one that gives you AI whether you like it or not, and one that advertises and prods and pulls you toward paid services whether you like it or not. There is change for change's sake, and not for small change either.

[...]

Linux has a fetish for freedom that can still seem daunting, with a bouquet of options in an ecosystem that resembles a rain forest in its florid complexities. Pick a mainstream distro, preferably with a community of users you can get on with, and set about learning it. It will run on any old tat, although you'll do better with something swift, and it will never, never not ever, stick its feeding tube down your nose to pump in AI.

Are government bailouts Microsoft's last resort? Can that work at all?

"Microsoft, the world’s most valuable company, declared a profit of $4.5 billion in 1998; when the cost of options awarded that year, plus the change in the value of outstanding options, is deducted, the firm made a loss of $18 billion, according to Smithers."

-The Economist, 1999

"They [Microsoft] have the deepest of pockets, unlimited ambition, and they are willing to lose money for years and years just to make sure that you don't make any money, either. And they are mean, REALLY mean."

--Robert X. Cringely

Other Recent Techrights' Posts

Passkeys Are Vendor Lock-in and Imperialism, Not Security, So Escape Them Before They Latch Onto Your Workflows
This is their 'grand vision' of computing. You merely 'rent' what you assumed you truly bought to own.
Let's Put Slop In the Casket Once and for All (Call Out the Sites and People Who Produce and Spread Slop)
Together, through a movement of integrity and solidarity, we can marginalise the spread of slop in all its forms, including code
Windows Down in the Largest Countries, Microsoft Cannot Dodge This Reality Forever
Talking about "clown" and "hey hi" (AI) - sometimes "Quantum" - is like telling bedtime stories to infantile investors who don't understand those buzzwords
 
Happy 20th Birthday to OpenDocument Format (ODF)
nowadays many companies use "online" "webapps" to collaborate on various things
Links 03/05/2025: Amazon and Apple Problems (the A's in GAFAM), Hard to Hide Any Longer; Australia’s Election
Links for the day
Why Law Firms and Courts in Particular Should Dump Microsoft
Giving a notoriously corrupt and chronically law-breaking company control over one's systems and data is a recipe for disaster
Gemini Links 03/05/2025: Showerhead Mod and Micro Dosing on LSD
Links for the day
Links 03/05/2025: Bribery in Dutch Microsoft DC Probe, Zuckerberg Conflates Slop With 'Friends'
Links for the day
Today is World Press Freedom Day, 3rd of May
2025 World Press Freedom Day
Gemini Protocol's Momentum Ahead of Its 6th Anniversary (Next Month)
The more capsules go online, the more people participate in writing, not just reading
Corporate Media, a Cheerleader of Wall Street Facade, Spent Days Saying "META" and "MSFT" Lifted "the Market", But Their Debt Soared
Facebook's debt has never been higher
Microsoft Windows Falls to a Meager 9% "Market Share" in South Africa While GNU/Linux Rises Above 5% in Desktops/Laptops
South Africa is where the founder of Ubuntu (or Canonical) comes from
Links 03/05/2025: Australian Election and manpage for Gemini Considered
Links for the day
Links 03/05/2025: UK Arrests for Bribery Connected to Microsoft Datacentres
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, May 02, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, May 02, 2025
Not Just an OSU Open Source Lab Issue
Prominent and very prolific news sites about Linux ask for help
GNU/Linux Has Risen to All-Time High in South America, Windows Has Fallen a Lot Due to Android
What will the rest of the year bring?
Richard Stallman (RMS) Says US "Magats" Have Destroyed Press Freedom in the US
Now they're exporting their attacks on the media to the UK
In Africa, GNU/Linux Rose From 3% to 4% in Just Two Months
So says statCounter anyway... What will it be like by the end of this year?
Gemini Links 02/05/2025: Bandcamp and Spying "Smart Glasses"
Links for the day
Microsoft Says Demand/Budget for "AI" is Decreasing, Bing is Also Moving Down and Down This Year ("Bing Chat" Was an Utter Failure, People Want Sites, Not Slop)
Skype is about to shut down, XBox will likely die soon
Asia is Running Away From USA-ware (Trump or 'Tariff Regime'), Including Microsoft Windows
The nationalism harms Microsoft
Data Shows Largest EU Economies Shifting to GNU/linux
all-time highs
Microsoft President Panics Over Europe's Abandonment of Microsoft/GAFAM/Trump's USA, These Figures Show Us Why
Microsoft is bluffing
Microsoft Windows Falls Below Quarter in "Market Share" (While Microsoft Fakes Rising Dominance... in Buzzwords and Fake Accounting)
Cooking the books while Windows gets 'cooked'
Links 02/05/2025: Expedia Group Undergoes Layoffs, Twitter Exodus in Europe
Links for the day
Techrights Statement: The Solution is Not More Censorship or Moving to Another Mastodon Instance, the Core Problem is Social Control Media Including Mastodon
Censorship typically leads to additional (new) issues
Good News, Bad News: Groklaw is Back Online, SoylentNews Apparently Loses Editor
Jan ought to change the resignation into a mere pause
Manchester Computing Centre (MCC) Made the First GNU/Linux Distro, But You Probably Never Heard of It
People like Owen are barely remembered, not because they didn't do valuable work but because they didn't suck up to "The Establishment"
Online Mobs and Crabs: Doing to Fabrice Bellard What They Did to Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds
They just don't want skilled people to be productive
E-mail is Not HTML, Web Pages Aren't a Form of E-mail
as an associate remains us, always use "plain text, it was good enough for Shakespeare"
Slopwatch: Stigma-Baiting by the Serial Sloppers and Latest Garbage From the Slopfarm LinuxSecurity.com (Also Slopping Away at "OpenBSD" With SEO SPAM Made by LLMs)
Microsoft et al are trying to profit from blurring away information
Links 02/05/2025: Mineral Selloff and Chinese Sanctions
Links for the day
Gemini Links 02/05/2025: Hens and Tmux
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 01, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, May 01, 2025
Gopher/Gemini Links 01/05/2025: Slop/LLM Bot Troubles and Driving Angry
Links for the day
Links 01/05/2025: Apple Lies to Courts, European Patents Thrown Out by British Courts Again
Links for the day
Microsoft's CEO is Hyping Up 'AI' (Plagiarism) to Distract From Falling Interest in It and Missed Expectations (Investors Run Out of Patience as Reality Does Not Meet or Match Early False Promises)
Microsoft clearly needs 1) a distraction and 2) hype about "AI"
No, Microsoft, Plagiarism is Not "AI"
"Satya Nadella says as much as 30% of Microsoft code is written by AI"
Microsoft Has Become Almost Extinct in Web Servers, Netcraft Now Ranks It in Only One Category (Microsoft Down Sharply), Deranked/Outranked in All the Rest
Microsoft used to be in all categories, now it's in just one
Gemini Links 01/05/2025: Small Web and Going Offline
Links for the day
Microsoft Has Hundred of Layoffs Again, Same Week as the Company's Fake Results
those people were in effect Microsoft employees, just classified as contractors
Sirius Open Source in Court
I personally was a witness and an alibi
What GNU/Linux Means to Us
Linux without freedom is like becoming a vegetarian "except on special occasions"
Links 01/05/2025: Slop Blowback, Social Control Media as Vehicle of "Sextortion"
Links for the day
Disinformation and Marketing Spam From and For OIN (GAFAM's and IBM's Weapon Against Free Software Activists and Reformists Against Software Patents)
All in all, this anniversary is just a PR stunt with revisionism
Some of the Evidence We'll Be Relying Upon in the Lawsuits Against Matthew J. Garrett
Finally facing the consequences for his actions
Symptom or Hallmark of Ponzi Schemes: Microsoft Says It Gains Over 100 Million Dollars in "Goodwill" and Its Speculative "Value" Nearly Doubled to $119,329,000,000 in the Past Year Alone
Total liabilities are now over $240,000,000,000
Gemini Links 01/05/2025: Trying OpenBSD and Usenet Reborn Released
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, April 30, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, April 30, 2025