Windows 7: Windows 7 overtakes XP - finally

Windows 7 has, finally, become the world’s most popular desktop operating system.

It overtook Windows XP in the first ten days of October with a 40.18 per cent share of the market, according to statistics gathered by Statcounter. At the latest measurement, 38.66 per cent of desktop computers in use online are powered by XP while Vista limps in on 11.21 per cent.

XP became the most popular operating system by quantity in 2003 after being released in 2001. Windows 7 adoption has been quick since it hit the shelves in 2009.

What's obvious from the Statcounter charts is the fact that Win 7 has grown at the expense of XP and Vista.

Still, with Mac OS X only commanding 7.27 per cent of the market, it’s not surprising that Microsoft is retaining customers rather than luring new ones. Linux, on the desktop, has all but flatlined.





Windows 7 overtakes XP - finally - The Register

The data on Linux is always wrong. These reports on go by how many copies where sold and how many of them have been active in the past 3 months. This is a bad way of gathering data. How about you go by how many diffrent installations have looked for updates in the past week. This would give you a real number. Linux has around 4% of users as a main OS and as a secondary it is around 12%. Mac OS X is around 18% if you go by how many have been updated in the paast week.

Most Linux users did not pay for there OS and this is why they always get over looked in these reports.

As this isn't about Linux I don't really care how many Linux machines there are. I am only interested in the Windows 7 v XP results.

nice. i was wondering which one was really more popular now. Win 7 FTW

What I was trying to point out is that these numbers are not always true. Also I think if you take away china the number of users of Xp is less the 20%.

Heh, maybe more popular, but it wont be the most used...unless it becomes free.

But ironically it won't happen under smaller environments, such as my company for example.

In this building, there are 45 machines (including Servers and Laptops/Netbooks). 90% of them are using Windows XP SP3, and no plans to upgrade them to any other OSs anytime soon. =s

Actually, this particular metric vendor uses web traffic to a number (very large) of customer sites that provide them data, and a good deal of these sites large, well-trafficked sites. However, StatCounter seems to show Windows 7 percentages a bit higher than other metric counters (such as NetMarketShare or W3Counter), which means you should never use just one as your only source. I personally prefer NetMarketShare's numbers, because they seem to a good number of the largest web sites, as well as good geographic dispersion of trackers, in their pool.

Using NetMarketShare, it shows (as of September 2011) XP still at just over 50% of the installed base going to their trackers, with Windows 7 at 32.4% and Vista at 9.09% (Linux, any version, is 1.11%), as worldwide numbers. If China is indeed removed from this pool (and China only), those numbers become more understandable:
43% XP, 36% Windows 7, 11% Vista

If you filter out Asia (given the vast majority of installations in Asia are XP, and a lot of those are suspected to be pirated by the vendor themselves):
39.7% XP, 37% Windows 7, 12% Vista

For reference, Asia shows up as:
62% XP, 27% Windows 7, 5.8% Vista

China specifically shows up as:
75% XP, 18.6% Windows 7, 2.5% Vista


Interesting, indeed. Windows 7's trend (adding about 1.2% worldwide a month, and slightly higher at 1.3% a month with Asia filtered out) would indicate that if trends stay roughly as-is, sometime in November Windows 7 will surpass the Windows XP installed base everywhere but Asia (where piracy is indeed rampant, especially in China and southeastern Asia).

No matter what they do to linux I have actually begun to believe it's just impossible to dumb it down enough for the common user to be comfortable with it.
Even many of the people I know that have used it exclusive for years still don't have it completely figured out.

I don't mean to get this thread off track but, I don't see what everyone likes about linux. other than it's "free". all it has is a bunch of fluff that no one needs and linux nuts act like it's the greatest stuff since sliced bread.
ooohh, you have a useless 3d cube.
well I can add and remove icons from my desktop. you can't. a way more useful feature that everyone would use.
back to back ubuntu vs windows 7 everyone I've let use both said the linux sucked. (average joe public user)

and I pretty much agree. it lacks so much actual useful features out of the box that it's like playing on a windows 95 machine. and getting everything up and working takes hours of downloading missing packages and software to get stuff to work. for example, to get a firewire port to work you have to download ubuntu studio controls. some program that sounds like it has absoutly nothing to do with a firewire port has the only control to enable it. (roll eyes)
one look in a control panel of a windows 7 computer and you'll find 75% more settings than a linux installation offers.
and at least a windows install I can choose from hundreds of drivers for hardware. linux one or two.