As the article notes, the increase seems to be driven mainly by users in Asia, where recycling and reusing older hardware is quite common. I wonder if third-party companies are offering extended security patches there, which could make affordable second-hand Windows 7 machines more appealing for people who just need them for browsing or light tasks. It would certainly make sense given recent fiascos and Microsoft’s current stance on AI, especially with generative AI being used to develop system-level code.
- Windows 7 was used to browse more web pages on a subset of sites that use the Statcounter plugin, and mostly in one area of the world.
But that doesn’t make a good headline.
I think that it’s a possibility for the rest of the world.
Could it be that something is spoofing a Win7 signature?
I personally just edited the registry to stop my Win10 upgrading to 11. If it fails, it’s Manjaro time.
Manjaro might not be the best starting point tbh. So many better choices.
It’s not that I’m disagreeing with you. I’m just not agreeing with you.
I personally think that (as unpopular an opinion as it may be) Flatpak’s largely make the choice of first distro irrelevant. The weakness in Manjaro is that you either risk using the AUR or stay on old versions of the software. Or with Mint/Ubuntu/etc… you either risk adding random repos to your sources list or you use older versions of the software.
Either way, you run the risk of a new person mucking up their system with a bad repo or a bad aur package.
The alternative, using flatpaks, largely solves both issues for when you need newer versions of a certain software, and are dead simple to install/remove/update, etc…
And I say this as someone who was super skeptical of flatpak’s for a very very long time.
The weakness in Manjaro is that you either risk using the AUR or stay on old versions of the software.
That is part of it yes. But Manjaro has so many other things specially new users will not expect and know how to fix, It is not a great starting point as they claim it is. From DDOS’ing the AUR to forcing users to rollback time because they let ssl certificates expire. their are many things they dont do right and for new users this can be a major turn of when they are hit with these issues. for a distro aiming to be arch but user friendly. And the user doesn’t have to do anything weird for these things to happen just use your system as you would no AUR and update and break the system. this has happened so often with Manjaro that i would steer away from it unless you know how to manually fix those breakages. but at that point just use arch.
If you disable TPM in your bios, W11 won’t install, nor update if it is already installed.
FYI if you have disk encryption enabled you need to pause/disable it first (assuming you’re using automatic unlock using the TPM, which usually is the default)
Still, it’s unusual for that to happen.
Thanks Microsoft spokesman.
Why is it that these scores are taken at face value until a corporation doesn’t like them? What you think 4% of a random set of servers suddenly started using Windows 7 to bot pages to drum up Windows 7 support?
Look at the data: https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/desktop/asia/#monthly-202408-202509
Or more specifically https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/desktop/singapore/#monthly-202408-202509
All the data is nice and smooth, slow rises or declines, as usual.
And then all of a sudden in July and only ins Singapore, Windows 7 goes from <2% to 92%. All other asian countries stay about the same.
Does this sound likely to you that 90% of users uninstall Win10 and Win11 in Singapore to install Win7 and all that in a span of just two months?
Or is it more likely that there’s some bug (or some botnet) causing false stats?
This guy analyzes!
It’s okay, Windows 10 will be the last version of Windows you’ll need!!!
It was. Linux Mint has been beautiful since I switched last year. Certainly nicer than windows.
Yep, Bazzite has been great for me on my gaming PC. Never going back.
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Right, cause it’s just too late if you didn’t do it early enough to be cool. Guess I’ll just go submit to Microsoft then, I was too late, I can never be a real Linux user like you.
Possibly from people booting up 15 year old laptops to see if they‘re still running so they can install linux on them before trying it on the big machine. Yes, this is my made up narrative but I believe that more than in a Win7 comeback.
Year of the Windows 7 Desktop?!
Don’t have a link to the thread on Mastodon, but it was only in Singapore. So it is likely a troll or some glitch.
Not from Mastodon, but from looking at the map for September:
Here’s a link to the rest of the map You’ll have to mouse over the different countries here, but regardless of whatever the heck is happening in Singapore, windows 7 is still sitting between 15-5% in other countries across Asia. and 10 is still nowhere near the “safe” levels for EoL coming up.
This is almost certainly a sampling error.
https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/desktop/singapore/#monthly-202408-202509
Win7 grows in Singapore from <2% to 92% within two months. All other asian countries stay the same. Yeah, that’s a sampling error.
It makes me a bit sad that there is a whole article on a (very likely) mirage
One caveat here: Statcounter provides no explanation for this unusual surge, so these figures should be treated with a certain amount of skepticism. Could there be a measurement error involved?*
A bot farm changed their spoofing to show Windows 7 by accident. /s. But it would be funny if that’s what happened
It’s 100% what happened
Nobody should be using old versions of Windows that no longer get security updates. Either switch to Linux and install all of the latest security updates, or enable the coming year of security updates on Windows 10, or run Windows 11.
Agree for a main computer but there’s no risk when using Windows 7 or XP on an offline machine.
If it were offline machines, then they wouldn’t be on these statistics
Fair point, I guess some people might want to do that to play old games or something like that.
A friend of mine was still on win7 and just recently made the switch to linux. In the end the issue was that most of the software stopped working.
I hated when software didn’t work on Windows. After switching to Linux my mouse, keyboard, monitor, hard drive, OS, and software don’t work 😂
(this comment is a joke I love 🐧)
I don’t get why people prefer to go to an unsafe version of windows instead of trying Linux. Nowadays there is many friendly distro.
Lack of education and training really.
I only knew of Linux because I saw some dude use Linux in 2012. And then a few years later, I finally decided to try it out as it was easier for work. After a lot of false starts, I finally started switching around 2021.
Going to imagine most people are the same - get experience from it and then have a reason to use it daily.
They feel more at home with it. And they shouldn’t be told how to use anything. Windows NT, were it cleared from all the mess, would be a very fine OS.
Or maybe something like AmigaOS or Haiku.
It’s a demand that Linux doesn’t fulfill, some sort of rebirth of Amiga could.
Its so dumb. Linux is the only way to actually get out from under the thumb of Microsoft and its so easy these days to switch.
Linux is the only way to actually get out from under the thumb of Microsoft
Aside from macos, bsd, ChromeOS, android, iOS, and templeos, sure.
I dont think being under the thumb of Google or Apple is any better. And Linux is just a much better choice than bsd for almost all people. That being said, I was impressed to learn that hacker news run their entire site on a single server with openbsd. :)
They should make a Windows version called Windows 10P which is the same as Windows 10 but only the bare-bones necessities and no extra crap or required online services, and sell it for $59.99 (seeing that Windows is already de facto freeware). That’s probably an order of magnitude than what they make from intrusive advertising anyway to a single user over the lifespan of a computer.
This already exists, and it doesn’t cost $60. What you want is the Windows 10 IoT LTSC Edition.
(Brought to you by Carl’s, Jr.)
Why do you keep saying that? Lol
I don’t know, but I find myself mentioning it often enough I feel like somebody ought to be paying me for it.
I use this on my DJ laptop. It’s nice because it doesn’t constantly bother you with bullshit, and is extremely stable.
Anyone still stuck on 10 who isn’t ready for Linux just yet should give LTSC a try. You’ll probably like it. It’s not going away anytime soon, either, because it is used in mission critical things like ATMs and cash registers that need to just work without being bothered with constant updates and reboots nor being bombarded with ads.
No way they will do that. The value for microsoft these days is in harvesting their victims info and forcing them in to their walled garden.
It would be of lower value to them without the data-gathering and the AI injection.
The data makes them money. The AI helps th justify their investment, but also gives them data to ad to their models.
How about a Win 7 Remaster? Since there’s been a lot of them recently.
Computers that are too new for Windows 7 come with Windows 10 preinstalled on them though. Who would buy an extra copy? You can debloat Windows 10 with a debloater tool
People who build their own computers, AKA the group most likely to complain about this
Tbf proton evolving fast as he doing, soon i won’t even will need windows beside my workplace notebook
Switched to Linux a couple years ago and at this point it is rare that a game doesn’t “just work” and even rarer when it still won’t work after trying other versions of proton in the Steam compatibility settings for the game.
Depending on if there is a specific game you know doesn’t work that is a deal breaker for you, it might be fine at this point to switch. Just throwing that out there. You may not need more compatibility than what is available.
How moddings tool like MO2 and the mods from nexus are behaving on Linux ?
Also, PCVR, playing HALF LIFE ALYX, Arizona Sunshine, OpenMW VR are huge deal breakers for me
I don’t think I’ve actually played any of those so I can’t speak to them but hopefully someone else can. There is a website you can check compatibility on although I don’t know if it includes non-games and/or tools. Arizona Sunshine looks like it’s fine: https://www.protondb.com/search?q=arizona+sunshine
If it’s gold or higher it’ll almost certainly play without issue. Silver will very likely play if you tweak the compatibility settings to change proton versions (go to game options in steam > compatibility > change the version. Bronze is hit or miss, you’ll likely be able to get it to work but it might require more work. Borked is of course…borked.
Anyways, someone else can probably answer those games specifically but if not you can use the website to check.
