According to Statcounter, Windows 11 held a 55.18% market share in October 2025. That share dropped to 53.7% in November and dropped again in December. Now, Windows 11 holds a 50.73% market share.
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/windows/desktop/worldwide
Many are rollback to Windows 10, but Linux is increasing as well.
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide
Love to see it
Make Microslop and Aividia the new Ubisoft
I miss the Nvidia that just made video game hardware :(
With Window 11, Microsoft AND America being horribly at the same time, whole countries are looking to replace their OS.
Switched to Linux recently, so good to see that I do my part on this statistic. It ain’t much, but it’s honest work.
Did my part. I’ve made it known amongst friends, family and colleagues that
- support for 10 is ending
- some machines won’t support Win 11 for no apparent technical reason (just to make them obsolete and boost sales of new tech)
- I’m willing to set up and support Linux systems for anyone willing to make the switch, thus possibly even prolonging the life of perfectly adequate hardware. (Only constraint: I declined switching people with strong software constraints that will not work or not work well on Linux and make them unhappy in the long run).
There were plenty of requests, including a small business, some absolute power users and even somebody on the other side of the globe. Everyone got a transition period, and since that is done, all machines have been chugging along without much issue. Support requests are near zero (and I do keep asking).
This may be my little bubble, anecdotal evidence and all that jazz. But from where I’m standing, this train has left the station, and it ain’t comin’ back.
What distro did you pick that is that bulletproof?
I went with Lnux Mint Cinnamon for the most part and Ubuntu GNOME in some instances. Either way, Debian-based systems.
Switched to CachyOS in December, so I guess I’m part of that statistic.
I was also part of the December Steam Hardware Survey statistic, but that was before I switched. So the December survey has an artificially inflated Windows statistic by at least 1 user.
I am done with Windows at home. I spent a whole weekend convincing my computer that it was allowed to install windows 11, going into my BIOS and changing settings, having to make a live USB drive with some windows setup tool, navigating numerous outright wrong guides on Windows’ on website, and at the end of it, I was greeted with the worst OS I have ever used in my life. I had thought complaints about Win11 were exaggerated like complaints about Vista back in the day- Vista was bad, but usable. Windows 11 is legitimately awful. Everything runs like shit on it. That day I resolved to switch to Linux for everything I could and started dual booting. Was the Linux install process difficult and complicated? Yes, but compared to what I had to do to get my computer to run Win11 it was a piece of cake.
What’s worse? Thanks to advancements in Wine and Proton, Windows software runs better on Linux now than it did on Windows 11. I have games that ran fine on Windows 10 that run like shit on Win11, and run fine on Linux. Sure, I am a technical person and I am very comfortable with the command line, but legitimately nothing I’ve had to do with Linux has been as frustrating as what I have to do to try to get Windows 11 to do anything right. I thought I’d be dual booting into Windows at least some to run some programs but I legitimately haven’t found anything that doesn’t run fine on Linux. Plus Linux doesn’t spy on my and sell my data, and Linux isn’t owned by a pedophile who hung out with the Epstein gang.
I imagine this is why MS is finally backtracking a bit on the aggressive pushing of AI in every app. They’re doing Clippy all over again, but OS-wide this time.
Just impressive how hard they managed to screw the pooch here. Have they forgotten that every other Windows release is universally hated? They had a good thing going until they discontinued Windows 10 before Windows 12 was out. Now they’ll probably need to rush out another version, because the name Windows 11 is forever tainted.
The thing that’s driving me away from windows is how pushy it’s gotten. Forced updates, ads, AI, OneDrive, and subscriptions. I just want to be able to turn on MY computer and do what I want or need without having my guard up that I can’t trust my home PC with my privacy.
Windows 11 is ok, but is frustrating to use and I can’t trust it not to screw with settings and there seems to be something annoying added instead of something useful with every update. I also hate the Settings menu, it’s like an unhelpful layer between you and Control Panel the eventually will take you to the same place but took 5 more clicks and searching through drop downs for a link to what you needed.
+1. I ragequit windows when it reinstalled Teams during an OS update, just after i uninstalled it.
I discovered that there’s a separate application which just reinstalls Teams all the time. I don’t remember the name, but it had Teams in the name. After I uninstalled that it finally stopped popping up.
Apparently:
This behavior is usually caused by two things:
- A background installer from Microsoft Office called the Teams Machine-Wide Installer, which automatically reinstalls Teams for each user.
- Windows 11’s built-in Chat feature, which is powered by Teams and may reinstall the app during updates or restarts.
It’s called something like Teams System-Wide Installer, at least it used to be. Who knows, now. It is now a hidden app that won’t show under programs and features. I had to figure that shit out at work cause originally it only installed per user and my work wanted our users to start using it and make sure they didn’t need to go looking for it. Once it got bundled with the Office install I no longer had to care!
Win10 LTSC IOT has support until like 2032, and doesn’t have any of that pushy bullshit. It’s free to pirate btw.
This is the way
Eh, if you’re not able to make the jump to linux ig.
Derrr
Lemmy tells me it’s more user friendly than ever.
I finally kicked Windows after 30 years because I have to use windows 11 for work, and it fails at almost everything an operating system should be. Search doesn’t work right. Applications don’t work right. Basic UI is buggy and inconsistent. It’s the most expensive piece of software I use. Using 2 cores and 7GB of RAM at idle is unacceptable for an operating system. It’s the equivalent of running Skyrim all the time in the background. It actively tries to undermine my privacy, and instead of using that data to enhance my UX, it spams targeted ads at me in my fucking taskbar. Windows 11 is basically a SmartTV in terms of privacy and functionality at this point. It actively gets in the way of you using the hardware, and to no tangible benefit. Worse, it’s become clear that Microsoft recognizes this, and is actively pursuing and expanding the capabilities, with no intent to make a good OS in the future.
I’m out.
That sounds frustrating. What have you switched to?
I’ve only worked one place with Linux desktops, I miss it.
My personal desktop is on mint. I just got an old 56 core, 256GB RAM, 18TB server from work. I’m running proxmox on that so I can spin up VMs with different distros on it to try them out.
That’s probably my main issue with Windows : Its ability to change settings on its own.
I feel like I have almost not control over my OS. It’s not a tool that helps me do stuff, it’s a dumb assistant that thinks he understands what I’m trying to achieve.
“Oh you plugged a PS5 Dual Sense controller I see, let me switch your microphone to the controller even though you are actively already using another one”.
“Oh you put your computer in sleep before going to bed? Let me switch it on In the middle of the night to update, we will call that a mandatory maintenance because you can’t disable that feature”.
I really need to spend more time on my Linux boot rather than this shitty W10 setup".
Windows update are starting to feel like updates to Pixel phones: what horrible shit is coming next?
The reason why Windows is pushy is because the average user needs it to be.
Updates would never get installed, unless Microsoft forces them to.
They would lose their files, unless Microsoft pushes OneDrive.
And all of them would blame Microsoft for their own ineptitude.
It is easy for techy people to keep their computer functioning properly. But Windows isn’t just used by those people.
I would say that it’s as simple as adding a prompt during initial user setup with check boxes. Would you like windows to handle XYZ for you? Instead of assuming all users just want to use their computers to become influencers and forcing frustrating problems onto everyone.
It may have started out with “hey we are doing this for your own good” to now it’s “how can we exploit ignorance and data mine our users and put ads on the desktop?”
There are alternatives, you can see the alternatives on display in various Linux distros, and hell, even Mac OS. The thing is that with Windows Microsoft doesn’t want you to think of an alternative.
It’s simply not true that the only way to do computing is to force everyone to use your trashy software or be nagged about it during every upgrade.
They are only doing this because they have the average user by the balls. Hopefully, Linux continues to get better and then that won’t be the case anymore either.
If Linux could run AutoCAD and didn’t have issues with anti cheat programs then I probably would have fully committed to the switch.
Before any says anything, yes I know there are CAD alternatives but all of my custom tools only work in AutoCAD and I have no idea how to recreate half of them if I had to and I wouldn’t know how to do it in another app anyway. Plus AutoCAD is the industry standard so for compatibility reasons, I’m locked in.
You’re giving Microsoft too much credit. The market in general doesn’t want you to think of an alternative.
I like that Linux isn’t designed for the lowest common denominator. Windows frustrated me as much with the stuff that was designed for the stupid as the stuff that was designed to make them money, just the second one ended up dominating in the end. But I remember the earlier frustrations often having the thought “I bet they just changed this to reduce support calls from people who don’t know wtf they are doing”.
I’ll agree on the update thing, but absolutely NOT on any of the other parts. Things like OneDrive are ENTIRELY about money.
With the update thing, even “pros” were incredibly lazy with updates in the past. Having automatic updates at least as the default is entirely correct.
I don’t trust Microsoft’s motivations, but these are all important considerations you bring up.
The lowest step of pushiness is a tray icon. Cinnamon did(does?) it like this. You have an exclamation point in the tray if you have updates available, otherwise it’s a green check mark on a shield. I thought this was an elegantly simple and effective solution though, as you point out, easy to ignore.
On the other end of the spectrum, Microsoft have gone to the extreme: you will upgrade, you have limited options to defer, you will backup to our cloud. Updates show up and you get to be surprised every upgrade cycle when something that was formerly working is broken.
I will always opt for freedom for myself and others, but I imagine a middle ground that holds the hands of non-technical users would look something like the warning when you access about:config in Firefox. “Here be dragons!”
Ultimately, on a normie-focused OS it may even be useful to provide the user with information about backups and let them choose. "Having a backup reduces your likelihood of losing your cat memes by %. By confirming below you acknowledge that cloud backup will not be set up. To avoid data loss, please follow the 3-2-1 backup methodology (link).
Confirm (y/N)
Every forced update is 5 minutes of hassle for each login. If you work from multiple PCs, it’s a nightmare.
I liked Clippy. I hate AI
📎I see you are nostalgic for your youth and how programs were tools and not spyware to track and target you. Maybe I can help with that 👮♀️👮♀️👮🏽👮🏽🚓🚓🚁🚁
Truely amazing !
Do you have a source for that backtracking about AI? I think they did not mention that explicitly. Instead they were talking about unrelated improvements. The CEO is still in denial about AI bloat. He seems unable to comprehend that people don’t like to be force fed AI everywhere across the OS.
They’re not in denial. They know no one wants it. They all do. They just don’t care because pretending like they do is extremely profitable in the fucked up modern economy we live in.
I think that Satya Nadella and a lot of other CEO types genuinely believe in AI, as misguided as it seems. This is more about who they choose to listen too than having an actual understanding of the technology and its limits. And probably some FOMO sprinkled on top.
Sam Altman knows what’s up though and so does Jensen Huang. In this gold rush one is peddling the fake gold and the other is selling the shovels.
Agree to disagree, I suppose. I believe the Anthropic guy because he’s actually quite nuts about it. Nvidia is the only company that’s actually going to make money here, selling shovels, as you said.
Yeah the Antrophic guys are also firmly in the “believer” group.
eh, they’ve sold most of their shovels on credit (which as income in it’s entirety, as one does)…the AIslop companies can’t turn a profit then all that revenue goes poof
https://pureinfotech.com/microsoft-windows-11-ai-brakes-copilot-recall/
Note that this article completely buries the lede. This is the last paragraph:
#Enterprise pushback is also influencing decisions#
Separately, enterprise users have pushed back against Copilot in managed environments, prompting the software giant to test options that would allow IT admins to uninstall Copilot more easily on business devices. This indicates that the rethink isn’t just about consumer sentiment but also addresses corporate deployment challenges.
The reason they’re having second thoughts is due to enterprise customers, who are the only customers they really care about the opinion of. If it was just home users complaining, they would not be adjusting course.
It’s not just AI, W11 is slow and unfriendly in general
Yep. Everything that runs in windows 10 runs worse on Windows 11 and y are getting nothing in return. My work PC can barely manage a big spreadsheet now.
I use VMs to program industrial PLCs and I find it outrageous that performance today is worse than what it was 10 years ago with the same software
Yeah, for a while I was looking for any benefits to moving from win 10 to 11. 7 to 10 had kernel and scheduler improvements, for example.
Only ones I could find were the virtual desktop support (though I had an alternative desktop back in the XP or Vista days that supported that, so not really groundbreaking), and WSL, which I didn’t have any use cases for.
Other than that, it was just shit I didn’t want. Copilot, recall, more UI changes that don’t really add anything (on my work laptop where I didn’t have a choice, first thing I did was go into the UI options and undo as much as I could). One of the things I used to like about windows was that it wasn’t a mac, but the UI changes look like that’s their inspiration. The inspired folks porbably all left already.
Only ones I could find were the virtual desktop support (though I had an alternative desktop back in the XP or Vista days that supported that, so not really groundbreaking), and WSL, which I didn’t have any use cases for.
Wait, what do you mean? 10 had virtual desktops and WSL (LSW!) too
So yeah, they built a new product and tried to force everyone to use it, when it had no improvements for the users whatsoever. And surprise, no one is excited to use it.
The first time I heard the “every other” theory I was sceptical but it has held true for a very long time now.
They might do an 8.1 and mess with some features (remember when they had to bring back the tool bar)? But another release is likely needed to fix some of the Win 11 performance and bloat issues now.
They’ve cut too deep, for some good reasons, but at the cost of making everything slow.
^ Note I haven’t even talked about AI here.
It isn’t even just the performance and bloat issues or the AI.
As you hinted, Windows 11 made a lot of changes to the UI. I can’t think of a single change made which I liked as someone who has had to deal with Windows since before 95. Windows 11 felt like a downgrade from Windows 10.
You’ve got a lot of managers with purchasing authority who developed a ton of muscle memory on old Windows. The new UI changes have made Windows feel alien enough that you can’t use retraining costs as an excuse to keep with Windows.
Windows 11 UI is a downgrade from XP.
Windows 11 is also deeply unstable. I haven’t had this many program crashes, errors, and other bullshit since Vista and ME. Windows 10 had it’s annoying quirks but it was at least relatively stable.
I have saved myself the headaches with UI changes since the Win8 clusterfuck when installed a 3rd party taskbar/menu.
I think explorer and the desktop tray got a little better in terms of UI. I actually find myself liking the centered icons.
That said, I’ve tweaked a lot with openshell and fully replaced the awful start menu and search to fix a lot of the garbage.
They thought they were too ingrained in everything for people to leave so they could start enshitfying and everyone would just have to deal with it. They knew they would lose some market share by doing so but are gambling on the increased profits from targeted ads and AI training data would make up for it.
It’s also likely that for a single glorious quarter stockholder value was slightly increased, therefore it was a complete success.
I think it’s more that they’re not really making money on Windows anymore. The money is in cloud services like Office 365. So Windows is just being used to push people towards what actually makes Microsoft money, disregarding whether they actually want those services.
Windows 11.1 anyone? lol
Windows 11.1.1 for desktops?
Why write this article in January when it’s main source shows an increase of 12% again in that month?? If anything this article should be about how statscounter is a very unreliable metric. Honest journalism really is dead huh.
That’s why I liked the “misleading?” tag mods can add to Reddit posts, it’s a good anti clickbait tool.
Because a ton of people got new devices for Christmas with Win 11 pre-loaded. Prior to that, Win 11 adoption rates were declining. It’s highly likely that future results will show Win 11 adoption continues to slide.
I highly doubt 12% of the pc market got a new laptop for Christmas. But maybe a lot of corporations got new pc’s for the 2026 budget to phase out windows 10? I still I find a 12% jump huge, especially in the current RAM shortage climate.
Doesn’t seem that crazy. I usually got about 4-8 years out of my laptops. So a little over 10% turn over makes sense to me statistically.
That’s also about what I saw at an MSP I briefly worked at, about 2000 managed PCs, and about 200 new managed PCs per year being prepared and deployed
That’s how adoption happens. People overwhelmingly don’t change the OS that comes with the device.
Clickbait bullshit.
The source shows that Windows 11 usage has been steadily climbing for a long time, including in January - the latest data available - but presumably that didn’t fit their narrative so they ignored all the data except the data single point that they liked which corresponds to the month where every business shuts down for a week.
Statcounter shows that not only is Windows use increasing, but also that Windows 11’s share is too.
I don’t expect anyone here to be happy about these things - I certainly can’t say I am - but pretending the Windows is in the middle of an epic downfall when it actually appears to be doing fine won’t help anyone except Microsoft.
How do they measure these stats?
They aren’t reaching into my PC so they’re only checking when I [X].
So it isn’t it always just measuring “Os percent from user who [X]”
E.g. Steam only check people with Steam. Slash Dot can only going to measure PCs who go to Slashdot. AOL.com is only checking Boomers.
Agreed, there is no objectively perfect way of measuring this stuff. My point mainly is that the author of the article picked one data point, took it out for context and built an entire lie on that. It’s very much a “look at this snow - so much for global warming” argument. But also, we keep hearing how much Windows is tanking and yet all the metrics we have show it’s actually doing well. Do people like it? No, I don’t think they do. Do I personally want to see Windows crash and burn? Yes, at least in it’s current form. But for all the frustration and anecdotes it doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere, and I don’t think any decision-makers will be convinced that Windows is failing when all the available stats suggest otherwise.
Statcounter is running on more than a million websites. They track user metadata across these websites.
While this doesn’t give you absolute numbers for everything, it should be enough to notice trends.
Their methodology is on their website.
People upgrading to Windows 11 be like:
This was me. Hit the update to 11 button because I have always liked new things. About a week later went back to 10, then about a year ago saw the writing on the wall and jumped ship to Mint. Shoulda done it earlier!
Its the first time my peers are actually asking me about switching to linux. Sweden is an extremely techbro country, which i say because they have all the newest gadgets and then cant open a file for fucks sake.
Windows 11 market share went from 55% on October 2025 to 62% on January 2026. That’s an increase of 7 percentage units, not a drop of 5 percentage units.
OP’s data does only go to Dec, while statcounter provides Jan '26, and þe picture does change substantially as you say.
Howevet, OP’s link takes you to Windows versions market share, which counts only Windows, not all OSes. Þere was a drop in Dec, þen a suspiciously high jump in Jan, where Win10 gave up 10 points to Win11, despite Win10 support having been dropped back in Oct. Like a billion people suddenly decided to change versions Jan 1.
If you scroll down to All OSes, þe picture looks different.
Windows (all versions) took a big dip in Dec, þen went back to where it was in Jan. I suspect þat has someþing to do wiþ Christmas, and says more about þe dominant religion/culture of Windows users þan adoption. Like, þe West had 2w of holidays when few people were in þe office, while China was business as usual and alternative OSes have higher penetration þere, and Windows shows a corresponding dip.
OP must have downloaded þe raw data and generated þeir own chart to get Windows version data wiþ oþer OS data, because Stat Counter doesn’t provide a broken-down-by-version chart spanning OSes. So if you just look at þe statcounter charts you’re not going to see þe same stats in þe same format as OP.
Couldn’t get through your comment due to your thorne gimmick; simply not worth the effort.
Good luck with it though, unless it’s some white supremacist thing.
It is rather suspicious how tenaciously he’s clung to this easily disproven notion that it somehow poisons LLMs…
Dog whistles are ostensibly something else by design, hence my caution.
It’s not so bad in comments that don’t have a significant amount of ‘th’ in it, but this one was like hitting a speed bump every five feet.
I been switching everyone to Linux, specifically Mint. It’s good enough now for whatever.
I switched my parents to Linux more than 10 years ago. They are very happy with it.
What generation are they?
Mint? Based on Ubuntu 22.04? Seems a hint dated.
No offense, I swear. But I have a buddy who has to support Mint installs for work and it honestly sounds horrible.
Then again, the ease of use is probably worth the time saved setting up Arch.
Edit: It is Pop!_OS that is based on Ubuntu 22.04 not Mint. Ubuntu spinoffs spun me through a loop.
There are many stops between mint and arch. I’d personally point a new user towards fedora or maybe another Debian distro
Honestly, I’m with you on that one. Debian is reliable, so it send like the safest option. Personally, I use it for my seed box, and I’ve helped others set their own up to. Fedora, on the other hand, introduces package updates a little more frequently and in the long run, I think it’s more enjoyable to work on in a desktop environment.
It depends on what you’re doing. I’ve got Mint on my laptop and main PC, and the experience is different on both. On the laptop I tend to play Minecraft and do some basic tasks like taking notes and browsing the web. There’s nothing in Mint that really affects that, so it doesn’t hold me back at all.
On the PC though, I’ve got all of my important software, and some of it has had to be installed manually because the Mint repos are outdated. It’s nothing that’s particularly difficult to fix, but I know my way around computers. For your average user, it would be too much.
Even if it wasn’t an LTS thing, ‘dated’ means nothing to Linux. Stability but with security fixes is the real win. There’s a hell of a lot of room in the Windows install-base for “needs an os that’s not spying on them, but realistically just uses a web browser.”
Dated means a fuckton in the Desktop world. Browsers get updates regularly, so do games and graphics drivers. There’s nothing “stable” about a website not working correctly just because my browser version is ancient and coming from the official repo.
Thank god flatpak has made people see the light, at least a little bit.
When a distro is ‘dated’ and get’s ‘stale’ updates, it’s not like the browsers don’t get regular updates. They’re just dragging their feet on kernel revisions and DMs, testing more and moving more slowly, gaining stability. Latest Firefox is still on Debian.
buddy who has to support Mint installs for work
The “work” part is probably why you have such a bad view of Mint. It could be any OS, but at work there would be a horror story every day (because theres a lot of people, most cant use computers, etc).
The ease of use and not having it break randomly is why you don’t use Arch for normal people who just need to get stuff done.
Actually I want to delete my comment… 22.04 is actually Pop!_OS not Mint. So I’m really dumb there, admittedly, Ubuntu spinoffs get me a little mixed up.
And the work bit, in truth, I think he could fix it by using a btrfs partition, snapper, and grub-btrfs. Build the machine to automatically take snapshots so if someone breaks it, you can fix it faster.
And yeah, ease of use is important, that was not meant as a criticism instead I pointed out a logical reason why Mint made sense.
Long story short, comment stupid, my bad.
Mint has snapshots available out of the box even with ext4, the welcome screen prompts you to create a snapshot to fallback to if anything goes wrong.
Interesting, I would love to understand the tooling behind that.
Here’s the github to Timeshift, their in-house snapshot tool.
Mint is based on 24.04, and will rebase on the next LTS when it’s released.
Alternatively, Linux Mint Debian Edition is based on Debian 13, which is currently newer than 24.04. Good option for non-nvidia users.
Straight up, I got it confused with Pop!_OS. Although I’m too lazy to look it up, my buddy who has been using it for years mentioned looking at other options because of that reason.
And this is the reason Linux will never go mainstream.
Even the Linux community can’t agree which distro is good enough for the general public.
I simply didn’t see it that way. Sure, the Linux community doesn’t necessarily agree on which version is the best for new users. But we tend to agree on reliable distros which are good to get started on.
Brand New user? Unless they have a specific task that the PC needs to do, then first priority is reliability. Off the top of my head, Debian is reliable as hell, Ubuntu is about the same and fine but not my preference (very dislike snap proprietary bs that almost no one uses anyways), Fedora is a common use case and while I haven’t used their desktop in a while, I rather like the rhel based distros they are reliable but keep things a little newer than say Debian.
The point is that I disagree with you entirely. You see the choice of distributions as daunting and a scary thing. I don’t. I see the choice as freeing.
It has never mattered to me personally what version of Linux someone is using, or what path they think I should go down, I do my own research for my own purposes and come back with my own options(maybe my 90s rebel inner child still exists). Admittedly, perhaps someone needs more guidance when running away from Microslop and I could help as long as I know what package manager the distro is using.
Now, you also say that Linux isn’t mainstream already? There are entire career fields built on it, why the hell is it not considered mainstream. DevOps typically uses Linux heavily, might be as simple as an install script, or a full k8s deployment. And shoot running docker servers for backing up your files via VPN? What about 25 TB of jellyfin movies/shows. Sorry, but even if not used as a desktop, a Linux server can go a long way and do a ton of good.
Just switched to Linux. Convinced sis in law to try linux as she was having driver issues. Wife is about to try it on our laptop. Linux has reached a point of, it just works. It can play windows games better than windows, so no reason not to.
How hard is it for laymen people to install and use it? Are there step by step instruction available?
Are there step by step instruction available?
You may very well need specific instructions to convince your motherboard to boot to the Linux live USB media.
(Edit: As suggested below: You may need to find and toggle “secure boot” to “off” in BIOS. The point of “secure boot” is to prevent exactly the kind of change you are about to make. You can turn it back on later, if you have a use for it.)
Although, if you replace the Windows harddrive with a blank harddrive, many motherboards will then do the right thing and boot to the Linux live USB key.
(Warning: Get your files off the Windows drive first. The windows drive is probably encrypted, and so won’t be useful for recovering files later.)
Getting booted into the Linux live media is by far the hardest part.
Once you’re booted into the Linux Mint Live USB key, make sure Linux Mint detected and is able to get on the Internet. You’ll need your wifi password.
Once you’re happy with that, click “Install Linux Mint” and just follow the prompts. The hardest question for me was remembering what my time zone is.
Linux Mint will tell you when to reboot, and will even remind you to remove the Live Media USB key.
Reboot and enjoy Linux.
Yep most BIOSes will have a toggle for Secure Boot. Make off.
This is the official Linux Mint installation guide: https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/
I’ve had a techy mate have issues installing mint, but I had no issues and have dailied it as an OS only reverting to windows in extreme cases.
If you’re not dual booting it’s simple as. My friend has had issues dual booting on the same drive, whereas I went one drive per OS and butter smooth. Nice to be able to recover one drive from another without external tools.
Ironically, I think it is harder for tech savy people. I have three hard drives and Mint struggled to put ext4 on my m.2, solution was use bftrs as a file system. Other than that googling and copy pasting the solution into terminal.
Pretty straightforward actually, plenty of distros even ship their own USB flasher tool so that you don’t have to use rufus.
Definitely step by step instructions available and even official videos now.
Getting a modern motherboard to boot to a USB key is still a royal pain in the ass.
(Edit: I forget that windows ships full disk encrypted now. Be sure to get your backups off of the Windows drive first!)
Pro tip: if you have the luxury of a spare hard drive, use it. Pull the old windows drive out entirely and set it aside to reuse later. Various “security features” that work to “protect” your Windows install behave better once the Windows drive is completely removed.
Once the Linux live USB is up, just click install and then “next” a bunch of times.
Which distro would you recommend for gaming? I usually hear people like Mint for that.
Mint is good for gaming and simple for most people but there are other distros which run newer versions of software or/and has more access to software. I generally use distros based on arch, such as EndeavourOS with the caveat that they sometimes break.
I play old games and interestingly had better FPS with default Mint than default Bazzite. Old like the last golden age 90s 2000s.
Bazzite or CachyOS (Bazzite for ease, CachyOS for performance).
Bazzite has been excellent on my older AM4 desktop with mid range AMD card. Steam came ready to roll and performance was so close to Win 10 LTSC, that I have yet to try a different distro.
I can’t recommend Bazzite. You can’t install new drivers if something doesn’t work right out of the box and that is just a complete no go for many people.
I hear ya. Its definitely not for everyone. If you are into tweaking your system, Bazzite isn’t for you. But I took the plunge, installed the apps and games I need, and its been running great the last few months. Just my 2 cents. YMMV.
Right but it literally doesn’t work on my system and I literally can’t make it work by design. It’s not a matter of liking “tweaking my system” it literally doesn’t work at all.
Yes, Bazzite adds complexity due to its immutable nature.
But then again, if you have driver issues on Linux (which has become reasonably rare these days), they’re hard to resolve either way, particularly as a beginner.
Nah it was pretty easy to update the drivers. I had to look up a guide but compared to updating windows it was nothing.
Brand new windows measurably losing ground to it’s prior unsupported edition and Linux is fucking wild.
