Steam Survey July 2024 Update: Windows 10 Usage Records Uptick, Windows 11 Drops

[DaemonForce]

I am still workin on getting Windows Server 2022 to be a gaming box. Because I love that server 2022 you can uninstall completely Windows Defender it saves over 1 GB of ram

I wouldn't bother. It's wasn't ready for prime time back in 2022 and I'll bet it's the same today.
Stuck to Server 2012 for as long as possible before adopting Win10 because I needed similar levels of control.
That's what it took to extend the life of my Phenom II X4 system.
The way the OS treated memory was different enough that I preferred the old way.
Also that was part of the 2009-2017 time period when I was still maxed at 4GB.
Things sure went 0-200 in a hurry. 2017: 8GB. 2019: 16GB DDR3/32GB DDR4. 2020: 64GB.
What did we learn? The size and speed matters. My next system will probably use 128GB UDIMMs.

Screw this Steam survey. It's not accurate at all.

Lol the same survey that says everyone is on the 3060 while you have to SCROLL just to find a crumb of RX 580 appear. That's hilarious.

The Steam hardware survey is completed nerfed by Chinese data.

The net cafes all throughout Asia are most likely driving up the figures on this and that appearing out of left field.

What's Edge used for then if I don't use it?

WEBM/WEBP previews in Explorer and other oddities seem tied to it somehow. I still haven't fully looked into it but it's another Internet Explorer situation. There's kind of a lot to cover. Take a look at program defaults.

I haven't been able to adopt Win11 for personal or professional use. Everything about it is either such a massive resource hog or the design so insufferable that I'd rather just stay out of it. I jumped back and forth between Server 2016/2019/2022 all throughout the Win10 timeline while trying to commit to some adoption of Win10. Only 2016 stood out as ready for prime time but the design is so old now that in a creator situations it fights some apps, can't integrate containers or psuedo-VMs of any kind and the service gotchas are annoying. I fully trust it for production though. Runs great on the 1c/1t eMachines in Core and Nanoserver versions. If I went back to cloud development I would be remastering a copy of Nanoserver for my FX rack to be full power 24/7 duty. 2022 has way too many teething issues to be fully adopted and not suitable for creation. I'll stick to Win10 for general purpose stuff until something serious pushes it out. With any luck that won't be until 2030 at the earliest. Some newer hardware driver models appear to be supporting Win11 only so that might be the first thing to break rank. I'm expecting it.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

It would be nice if Valve would finally fix the Steam survey. Make it poll every user every month, so we can get clear true data. It's not like it will cost them any more money, considering they have the system details of every user logged into Steam. Then make it opt in, with a percentage at the top to show how many users opted into the poll.

Spyware or not, what about your government & ISPs?

end to end encryption is a thing. Doesnt help you when the OS is the one doing the spying.

You use ISP email?

Hell naw. Who on earth still uses an ISP email address? I'm guessing the same people who still use AOL.

 

[Chrispy_]

I know for a fact the Win 11 start menu works better for some people, but unfortunately the "search for what you want" paradigm feels slow, inefficient and stupid to me.

That's because it is slow, inefficient, and stupid.

Windows is a GUI. A GRAPHICAL User Interface. We moved beyond text entry in the early '90s but for whatever dumb reason Microsoft wants us to type the name of the program which may or may not give you a shortcut that can launch the program.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Caught me lol, that's an ancient hotmail account, which I still exclusively access through a browser.


What's Edge used for then if I don't use it?

I suspect New Oulook needs it, Teams, as well as the Store. Anything that uses WebView2 is using Edge. You can see them when you expand out processes in task manager.

That's because it is slow, inefficient, and stupid.

Windows is a GUI. A GRAPHICAL User Interface. We moved beyond text entry in the early '90s but for whatever dumb reason Microsoft wants us to type the name of the program which may or may not give you a shortcut that can launch the program.

On my work machine, I’ll search for an excel document, and when the hit is right, I’ll hit enter, only to sometimes be greeted with “This action couldn’t be performed because Office doesn’t recognize the command it was given.” W11 is just a buggy mess, IMO. The most inconsistent OS experience to date.

 

[R-T-B]

Personally, I'm not on Windows 11 because it's a massive spyware. The things mentioned in the article have nothing to do with it.

It's as bad as Windows 10 in that department.

Hell naw. Who on earth still uses an ISP email address?

I do. Mine has free IMAP. That's honestly all I need. Keeps ads away.

 

[Icon Charlie]

If windows 7 wasn't a security concern, I'd agree with you.

For the basic tasks of adjusting your hardware settings, launching software, and finding/browsing drives - Windows 7 was a superior solution to 10 and 11. The improvements to Explorer's functionality in particular have come poisoned by the unwanted injection of web-searching, data-harvesting, AI suggestions, and advertising - which will cause poor explorer performance and even timeouts if those unnecessary web-requests and respective web-served bloat aren't working or their servers are overloaded.

I've been daily-driving W11 since it released and it's still inferior to W7 in so many ways despite me neutering as much of the BS as possible. Since I build and deploy machines I'm frequently exposed to Microsoft's idea of what W11 should be - ie, the out-of-the-box experience and it's terrifying in so many ways.

There are several work around's Win 7 security issues.

One of them is keep it off line. Hehehe.

Another is using Linux/Gnomebox and go virtual. I just might do this when I build my next rig and have this one as my Linux Box.

But I do understand where you are coming from and when have the time I'll work on which way to do this.

BUT W11 Sucks... I tried it... hated it and wiped it off my testing SSD.

 

[Shihab]

Windows is a GUI. A GRAPHICAL User Interface. We moved beyond text entry in the early '90s but for whatever dumb reason Microsoft wants us to type the name of the program which may or may not give you a shortcut that can launch the program.

Windows is an operating system. And searching for an application through a GUI is hardly a CLI.
Windows 11's start may be broken (I'll talk y'all word for it), but hitting super followed by first two or three letters of your application then enter was an effective and efficient method since at least Vista/7.

I'm all for keeping established interfaces as an option, but let's not be ridiculous here; my queries trump your icons any day (and this last part is [partially] sarcastic)!

 

[swaaye]

I remember when people wanted to stay on DOS. And when people didn't want to move from Windows 98 to XP.

Windows 12 or whatever it will be called must be right around the corner.

I think the worst major release was probably Vista. It and Win7 were so slow until SSDs became popular. Vista was especially terrible though because of how unstable drivers for it were and the hardware just not being fast enough to brute force it to be speedy.

 

[Ripcord]

Possibly because most of the cheats don't work on windows 11 or are detectable on it.

 

[AusWolf]

It's as bad as Windows 10 in that department.

To be fair, I've got an external SSD formatted and ready for Linux to be installed for some experimenting with Proton and Steam. Who knows, if it ends up working well, I might be ditching Windows for good.

I remember when people wanted to stay on DOS. And when people didn't want to move from Windows 98 to XP.

Windows 12 or whatever it will be called must be right around the corner.

I think the worst major release was probably Vista. It and Win7 were so slow until SSDs became popular. Vista was especially terrible though because of how unstable drivers for it were and the hardware just not being fast enough to brute force it to be speedy.

Nah. Windows 8 was far, far worse than Vista. Vista was slow because of its ridiculous hardware requirement, but 8 was completely unusable because of its horrible UI.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

To be fair, I've got an external SSD formatted and ready for Linux to be installed for some experimenting with Proton and Steam. Who knows, if it ends up working well, I might be ditching Windows for good.


Nah. Windows 8 was far, far worse than Vista. Vista was slow because of its ridiculous hardware requirement, but 8 was completely unusable because of its horrible UI.

8 got better with the 8.1 update, but simply using Start8 brought the best of both worlds.

I recommend Manjaro for your trial run. Being based on Arch, it’s what SteamOS is based on so the support is best. There are games I’ve tried on Ubuntu that won’t work right with Proton, but work just fine in Manjaro. It’s been good enough that I wiped my W11 drive, which I hadn’t even booted to in a few months.

 

[AusWolf]

8 got better with the 8.1 update, but simply using Start8 brought the best of both worlds.

If I need a third-party tool to use an OS properly, then it's not a good OS. Simple.

I recommend Manjaro for your trial run. Being based on Arch, it’s what SteamOS is based on so the support is best. There are games I’ve tried on Ubuntu that won’t work right with Proton, but work just fine in Manjaro. It’s been good enough that I wiped my W11 drive, which I hadn’t even booted to in a few months.

Thanks. What about Mint? That's the one I've got on a USB stick right now as I've used it in the past, albeit not for gaming.

 

[AGlezB]

Nah. Windows 8 was far, far worse than Vista. Vista was slow because of its ridiculous hardware requirement, but 8 was completely unusable because of its horrible UI.

Microsoft Design Language. I know at least two people who used Windows Phones and my eyes bled every time I saw them.
Then came Win 11 and MS decided to stop trying to reinvent the wheel and now they just copy Apple's UI design. I'd love it if they also copied Apple's software policy and stopped bundling garbage in the base OS.

 

[wolf]

Let's be honest, if I didn't have to upgrade for modern CPU and DirectX support, I'd probably still use Windows 98 or XP.

I remember having to go to Vista for DX10, ergh.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

If I need a third-party tool to use an OS properly, then it's not a good OS. Simple.


Thanks. What about Mint? That's the one I've got on a USB stick right now as I've used it in the past, albeit not for gaming.

Mint is Ubuntu-based, so it might have some of the same struggles I ran into. I had more than one game not want to run in Ubuntu 24.04. Arch-based required nothing but enabling Compatibility in Steam, which is just a toggle.