Look at the data: gs.statcounter.com/windows-ver…

Or more specifically gs.statcounter.com/windows-ver…

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?

Desktop Windows Version Market Share Asia | Statcounter Global Stats

This graph shows the market share of desktop windows versions in Asia based on over 5 billion monthly page views.

^{StatCounter Global Stats}

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.

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: protondb.com/search?q=arizona+…

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.

They have been trying to force a microsoft accounts on everyone. I know what a walled garden is and when Microsoft looks at apples they are jealous. Remember S mode? The shitbox machines microsoft pushed out that could only use their app store. That is the end goal for them. They just can't sell it.

My current problem is keeping copilot and recall off of our public computers. People are using them and want them clear of spyware and intrusive monitoring. You can not really get rid of any of the microsoft software since they now cache it on the computer. Anytime someone new logs in it puts 365 and copilot on their profile. If you delete it from the cache its back the next update cycle. They have begun putting notepad and basic programs in the cache. So you can't just kill it by making the cache path inaccessible. They are gearing up to close off all holes and force their app store onto everyone. They are working toward a walled garden where everyone has a microsoft account.

So maybe you don't know what a walled garden is? You don't understand that they have everything in place to lock out any third party software. They have recall, a huge security risk to train up their AI's. You can't believe anything they say about it. I know this because I've been around since the dos floppies had the IBM logo on them.

They have a unmanageable cache of software downloading without consent that uses their app store and if you kill it with a gpo you start having problems with basic functions. They killed wsus because it could be used to lock out their garbage. Despite operating in a domain environment I still see messages on accounts urging people to link a microsoft account.

So please tell me about what I know or don't know.

You don’t know that a walled garden requires them to lock you in to only install from their store, while windows lets you install anything you want however you want. While S mode exists, it’s never going to be the only mode because people need legacy win32 programs and all sorts of custom programs. Microsoft know that removing that ability will destroy Windows, which is why they haven’t.

Copilot has options to not collect data etc. copilot and recall are completely optional - you don’t have to use them. They’re not “spyware”.

I’ve been around since floppy disks too. You should know better than what you just wrote if you have been around this long.