[added analysis] October Steam survey: Windows 10 loses 17.3% market share, Windows 7 gains 23.7% market share

[leadeater]

7 hours ago, LAwLz said:

It's as soon as you don't do both of those things that it becomes extremely frustrating.

Windows Updates shrinking my game to task bar is an eternal pain in the ass, I have way too much stuff open all the time to want to restart and I just sleep my computer. I'm a horrible computer user lol.

 

7 hours ago, Hellion said:

By your logic, adjusting UI settings is then considered "altering existing parameters" since windows only installs one way stock out of the box.

Yes it is that, Windows presents you with a bunch of options you can chose from and you pick the one(s) you want. 

 

7 hours ago, Hellion said:

You are trying to compare adding physical parts to altering software.

No I'm not, you're the one saying adding 3rd party software to an Operating System is altering software and you saying it doesn't make it so. Hey that's cool if you want to say it's that who am I to argue with your opinion, I have mine, you have yours, you don't agree, I don't agree, awesome. Freedom of thought, expression and choice and I wouldn't have it any other way.

 

I don't think you have addressed the point about trying to compare modified versus not modified yet though, the fundamental point being demonstrated yet you chose to argue about this instead? Because no one was saying you shouldn't do what ever you like to the OS of your choice to get it how you like it, but in an OS comparison you compare the OS not the other things you have done to it because that introduces an almost infinite list of variables in to the equation which makes the entire discussion pointless.

 

Little bit of scientific method wouldn't be amiss in this situation.

[laminutederire]

10 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

 

As @mr moose said, if you just shutdown your computer every night, everything is somewhat seamless. Most people should shut it off anyway because the time it takes to boot up nowadays is ridiculously small compared to what it used to, so you can just turning it on and off everytime you need to use it

[Dabombinable]

1 hour ago, laminutederire said:

As @mr moose said, if you just shutdown your computer every night, everything is somewhat seamless. Most people should shut it off anyway because the time it takes to boot up nowadays is ridiculously small compared to what it used to, so you can just turning it on and off everytime you need to use it

Have you tried using Windows 10 on a standard laptop HDD? Its painful waiting for it to start up and shutdown.

[jagdtigger]

3 hours ago, laminutederire said:

As @mr moose said, if you just shutdown your computer every night, everything is somewhat seamless. Most people should shut it off anyway because the time it takes to boot up nowadays is ridiculously small compared to what it used to, so you can just turning it on and off everytime you need to use it

Yeah, unless you dont have that much money and your PC/laptop has only a HDD... Top it off i know many people who have a ton of stuff open and they just send the PC to sleep. Many of them were pretty pissed when they greeted by the login screen because crapware10 waked up their PC to install updates then restarted. (Not to mention my little adventure when my PC always woken up in the middle of the night without a reason(lastwake didnt showed anything)).

[airdeano]

instead of attacking others for their opinions, let's just stick to the topic of OS shares.

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[mr moose]

6 hours ago, Dabombinable said:

Have you tried using Windows 10 on a standard laptop HDD? Its painful waiting for it to start up and shutdown.

Everything is painful on a standard laptop hdd.  Waiting what feels like 5 minutes for a browser window to open on a fresh install.  Grrrrr.

 

4 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

Yeah, unless you dont have that much money and your PC/laptop has only a HDD... Top it off i know many people who have a ton of stuff open and they just send the PC to sleep. Many of them were pretty pissed when they greeted by the login screen because crapware10 waked up their PC to install updates then restarted. (Not to mention my little adventure when my PC always woken up in the middle of the night without a reason(lastwake didnt showed anything)).

 

Yes, updating on old hardware and slow hdd's is a pain in the ass when you want your PC to be left on 24/7 for whatever reason.  However you have to update at some point and it's human frailty that says "I'll do it tomorrow"  but then that ransomware spreads tonight and tomorrow is too late.  At the end of the day, Windows is a generic desktop who's majority users are generic, Whether we like it or not forced updates and making it harder to avoid updating is reaction to people not updating and malware/virus's.  It's a "feature" that is not going away anytime soon on windows. 

[AresKrieger]

18 hours ago, lefthandsword said:

People seems to have really short memories. It's also a thing on Windows 7. It either minimizes the game or restarts your computer without warning in other cases.

I don't even think default settings do that as it never did for my laptop even before I completely customized it, either way I've been running windows 7 for at least 5 years and have never seen it force restart due to updates or show that message I have however seen it happen during the couple hours I used a windows 10 install

[r3d0c]

Funny how OP jumped straight to circlejerking w/o even reading the article he linked

 

Quote

You could be forgiven for thinking that Steam has made a mistake here, or that gamers are turning their backs on Windows 10 in huge numbers, but it seems likely that at least a sizable portion of the change can be attributed to China's influence.

 

According to the Language section of Steam’s survey, Simplified Chinese surged 26.83 percentage points to 56.37 percent in October, while English fell 13.40 percentage points to 21.24 percent. It seems reasonable, therefore, to assume that Chinese gamers running Windows 7 are responsible for much of the shift we’re seeing here. There's no official word from Steam on this yet.

 

[jagdtigger]

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

Everything is painful on a standard laptop hdd.  Waiting what feels like 5 minutes for a browser window to open on a fresh install.  Grrrrr.

 

 

Yes, updating on old hardware and slow hdd's is a pain in the ass when you want your PC to be left on 24/7 for whatever reason.  However you have to update at some point and it's human frailty that says "I'll do it tomorrow"  but then that ransomware spreads tonight and tomorrow is too late.  At the end of the day, Windows is a generic desktop who's majority users are generic, Whether we like it or not forced updates and making it harder to avoid updating is reaction to people not updating and malware/virus's.  It's a "feature" that is not going away anytime soon on windows. 

Sorry but thats not a feature, its a huge PITA. Especially when you loose data because of it. An OS should never restart automatically(let alone when its in sleep), period. BTW this is pretty counterproductive since its so annoying that even the r=1 user will disable it IMO.

[laminutederire]

17 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

Sorry but thats not a feature, its a huge PITA. Especially when you loose data because of it. An OS should never restart automatically(let alone when its in sleep), period. BTW this is pretty counterproductive since its so annoying that even the r=1 user will disable it IMO.

Well blame it on the end users who are dumb enough never to update anything. Hell my parents are surprised they get Windows co updates. Why? Because they have never updates it properly, that's why. After that there are more security issues and so on, and it backsashes on Windows image, so they kinda had to do something about it.

Have an up-to-date machine is not the issue. The only issue Microsoft has is to update things properly without breaking stuffs sometimes. That being said there are not that many people losing their data in the process.( And speaking of what they should have done anyway: keeping backups.)

[MoonSpot]

11 hours ago, leadeater said:

Windows Updates shrinking my game to task bar is an eternal pain in the ass, I have way too much stuff open all the time to want to restart and I just sleep my computer. I'm a horrible computer user lol.

Yea, that sucks.  Looks like we're going to have to wait for a windows emulator just so we can "save state" and not have to re-run through half of yesterdays level just to pick up where we left off in the game O'life.  But thats kinda what saving VM sessions does, so... :shrugs:

Don't think IT security folk like the idea of windows save states in the least.

[jagdtigger]

1 minute ago, laminutederire said:

Well blame it on the end users who are dumb enough never to update anything. Hell my parents are surprised they get Windows co updates. Why? Because they have never updates it properly, that's why. After that there are more security issues and so on, and it backsashes on Windows image, so they kinda had to do something about it.

Have an up-to-date machine is not the issue. The only issue Microsoft has is to update things properly without breaking stuffs sometimes. That being said there are not that many people losing their data in the process.( And speaking of what they should have done anyway: keeping backups.)

Yeah, its less harmful to their image that the OS does what he wants and ignores the user... Just because the idiots jump into the well you dont jump after them, well aside from MS it seems.

[Delicieuxz]

2 hours ago, rhn94 said:

Funny how OP jumped straight to circlejerking w/o even reading the article he linked

 

The first sentence of my commentary says:

On 05/11/2017 at 1:19 PM, Delicieuxz said:

The article suggests that the shift could be due to the large numbers of players in China using Windows 7.

 

So... did you just jump straight to responding without even reading the OP you're commenting on?

[laminutederire]

1 hour ago, jagdtigger said:

Yeah, its less harmful to their image that the OS does what he wants and ignores the user... Just because the idiots jump into the well you dont jump after them, well aside from MS it seems.

It's mostly people from forums like this one who complain about that, so... yeah it is less harmful to their image.

You know you can run w10 everyday and still not being an idiot...

That doesn't help having a discussion being told you'r an idiot if you prefer something. All I said was that for people who actually power down their machines, w10 is actually not intrusive at all regarding updates. I'd say the most annoying part about updates is that their roll up has always some delays with their wave system.

[LAwLz]

3 hours ago, laminutederire said:

The only issue Microsoft has is to update things properly without breaking stuffs sometimes.

I think Microsoft has more issues than that with updates.

1) Forced updates are bad. This really isn't up for debate. Removing options from consumers is bad. If I don't want updates then that should be my choice, not Microsoft's. It's my computer after all. There is a reason why Microsoft has a different update system for businesses and that's because this kind of bullshit does not fly in enterprise environments. Want to protect the average consumer who shouldn't be messing with update settings? Then have it locked down on Windows 10 Home, and have it fairly hidden in the settings. Most people don't dare touch the settings at all, so these two things would make sure 99% of users are up-to-date, and you would avoid pissing off the remaining 1%.

2) You shouldn't need to restart the computer for updates. Windows is notorious for needing to restart and Microsoft should fix that. You can patch everything on some GNU/Linux distros without restarting, even the kernel. It's about time Microsoft catches up.

3) The thing you mentioned, Microsoft's updates has become really sloppy in the last couple of years. They break stuff all the time. Reset settings, reinstall things previously removed, cause bugs, cause data loss, and so on.

[laminutederire]

21 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

 

I think that they would've done it the android way if their OS wasn't as big as it is. It may partly be what they did to ease the process since the fall creators update, to just update parts in a modular fashion, so as to limit downtime. I think they would do it the Linux way if they hadn't so many constraints with backwards compatibility (which is sometimes nice to have but hold them back as well).

At some point they'll probably dump compatibility in a VM fashion and just stop having it "natively". This way, they can rewrite the update mechanisms to work better on only the last part and have something manageable.

For 1), I wouldn't know that much how it is for home, since I have the pro version which is big nicer for updates. It even put me by default in the slow update branch for businesses. Unfortunately, average consumers do not give a damn about having this option and they happily lock themselves down in tightly closed ecosystems. Look at how well adopted the Apple or Google ecosystems are. Microsoft's take on it is resembling software as a service more than as a good, which explains why your machine isn't entirely your machine anymore. That's however the way the whole industry is going. It has started for games and for hardware as well with cloud based services. On the economics side, it seems like the only way to go if you seek profits, so it's unlikely the trend will reverse..

[mr moose]

4 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

Sorry but thats not a feature, its a huge PITA. Especially when you loose data because of it. An OS should never restart automatically(let alone when its in sleep), period. BTW this is pretty counterproductive since its so annoying that even the r=1 user will disable it IMO.

 

Call it whatever you want, it exists solely because people weren't updating.

 

22 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

I think Microsoft has more issues than that with updates.

1) Forced updates are bad. This really isn't up for debate. Removing options from consumers is bad. If I don't want updates then that should be my choice, not Microsoft's. It's my computer after all. There is a reason why Microsoft has a different update system for businesses and that's because this kind of bullshit does not fly in enterprise environments. Want to protect the average consumer who shouldn't be messing with update settings? Then have it locked down on Windows 10 Home, and have it fairly hidden in the settings. Most people don't dare touch the settings at all, so these two things would make sure 99% of users are up-to-date, and you would avoid pissing off the remaining 1%.

2) You shouldn't need to restart the computer for updates. Windows is notorious for needing to restart and Microsoft should fix that. You can patch everything on some GNU/Linux distros without restarting, even the kernel. It's about time Microsoft catches up.

3) The thing you mentioned, Microsoft's updates has become really sloppy in the last couple of years. They break stuff all the time. Reset settings, reinstall things previously removed, cause bugs, cause data loss, and so on.

 

It really is opinion if forced updates are bad.  The reason it is different in enterprise is because enterprise typically has dedicated staff that maintain and service all systems. They do not need forced updates because updates are manually controlled in a timely manner.  The home users who don't know how to do this are the ones that turn off updates and then become part of the next ransomware/worm problem.   And that is bad for everyone, not just MS's image.

 

I also don't think it's an apples to apples comparison between Linux and windows,  apart from being completely different kernels,  the user base as a desktop OS is so small for Linux that you cannot appreciably compare the number of bugs, breakages or the like.   It's simple math that we are going to see a lot more complaints/issues with windows.  After all. no one starts a thread to say their last update/upgrade was a non-event. 

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

There is a reason why Microsoft has a different update system for businesses and that's because this kind of bullshit does not fly in enterprise environments.

Well enforced updates are a thing in the enterprise market, it's just that it's a business decision to do it and is part of IT and Security governance and policy. That as you point out is the difference, choice versus enforcement. It's just that IT takes the choice away from the user instead of Microsoft, for a home user they don't get that choice where they should.

 

You have one section or group of people that get to have complete control of the computers they own and control and another section or group of people who don't have complete control over the computer they own. Having the default configuration as install all updates and reboot should be all that is required, then if someone wants to change that it's on them.

 

I can attest though giving users the choice generally doesn't work. Anyone that says they set their updates to manual only but still applies security updates regularly and in a timely manor where it would actually be effective to stop a breach is something I find very dubious. At one point we stopped enforcing reboots for 6 months to our 5000 staff/3000 staff computers (student labs not changed) to ensure updates were applied, the result was near enough to nil. Almost no one rebooted their device or took any initiative to install Windows Updates that were available in that time period, myself included lol. Granted this is a different situation to a home user but habits don't change a great deal.

 

I very much hate it when I come in to work and my computer is at the login screen and all my work is gone, all the browser tabs, RDP sessions, vSphere client, Office docs, notepad++ etc but that's just the way it is and needs to be. I can hate it all I like but the best part about it is that policy is configured and enforced by me .

 

TL;DR I have no faith in users/people to install Windows Updates but that should be their own problem not ours or Microsoft's, let them disable it.

[mr moose]

11 minutes ago, leadeater said:

I very much hate it when I come in to work and my computer is at the login screen and all my work is gone, all the browser tabs, RDP sessions, vSphere client, Office docs, notepad++ etc but that's just the way it is and needs to be. I can hate it all I like but the best part about it is that policy is configured and enforced by me .

 

 

 

Can't you save all your work and create some sort of restore point/save for sessions?  

 

But you're right, people are people, we by nature put things of or just plain ignore them, if it isn't an immediate problem then it isn't a problem (and doubly so for those who don't understand the importance of security updates).

[leadeater]

7 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Can't you save all your work and create some sort of restore point/save for sessions?  

Most things reopen on login, notepad++ saves where you're at even if you don't save and reconnecting RDP sessions puts you right back where you were. I still find it annoying but the impact is minimal, other than the login totally nuking my device because it's opening 6 Chrome windows with 15-20 tabs each lol.

[jagdtigger]

7 hours ago, laminutederire said:

It's mostly people from forums like this one who complain about that, so... yeah it is less harmful to their image.

You know you can run w10 everyday and still not being an idiot...

That doesn't help having a discussion being told you'r an idiot if you prefer something. All I said was that for people who actually power down their machines, w10 is actually not intrusive at all regarding updates. I'd say the most annoying part about updates is that their roll up has always some delays with their wave system.

By idiots i meant the ones who disable updates without knowing what they doing...

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, jagdtigger said:

By idiots i meant the ones who disable updates without knowing what they doing...

 

But people need to be protected from themselves.   The biggest killer of early steam train drivers was themselves, screwing in the safety valve because it constantly let off steam and annoyed them.  Not much has changed in the last 200 years, that is why websites force you to use more complicated passwords, if they didn't people would still use their date of birth and partners name. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6iW-8xPw3k

 

[Dabombinable]

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

 

But people need to be protected from themselves.   The biggest killer of early steam train drivers was themselves, screwing in the safety valve because it constantly let off steam and annoyed them.  Not much has changed in the last 200 years, that is why websites force you to use more complicated passwords, if they didn't people would still use their date of birth and partners name. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6iW-8xPw3k

 

Some websites also do the stupid thing of restricting allowed characters instead of forcing more complicated passwords....

[mr moose]

Just now, Dabombinable said:

Some websites also do the stupid thing of restricting allowed characters instead of forcing more complicated passwords....

And those website/security creators are supposed to know better.   What hope does the common person have?

[LAwLz]

12 hours ago, mr moose said:

It really is opinion if forced updates are bad.  The reason it is different in enterprise is because enterprise typically has dedicated staff that maintain and service all systems. They do not need forced updates because updates are manually controlled in a timely manner.  The home users who don't know how to do this are the ones that turn off updates and then become part of the next ransomware/worm problem.   And that is bad for everyone, not just MS's image.

It's not an opinion though.

More choice is better for consumers. Of course there are situations where users gets dissatisfied by having too much choice and they do things they shouldn't do, but those are all situations which can be avoided.

Don't want the average Joe to change update settings? Then have the defaults to be just the way they are today, but add a powershell command which pops up a warning and requires UAC permission, and once you do that it goes back to being on-demand updates rather than forced.

Problem solved.

 

99% of people leave the settings on default unless forced to choose (this happened in Windows 7 where you had to choose at install if you wanted updates automatically or not, and that was bad). That means that with my suggestion 99% of people will be protected, and the remaining 1% will get the control they want (for various reasons).

 

 

 

12 hours ago, mr moose said:

I also don't think it's an apples to apples comparison between Linux and windows,  apart from being completely different kernels,  the user base as a desktop OS is so small for Linux that you cannot appreciably compare the number of bugs, breakages or the like.   It's simple math that we are going to see a lot more complaints/issues with windows.  After all. no one starts a thread to say their last update/upgrade was a non-event. 

I wasn't trying to make an apples to apples comparison. Not sure if you have seen my other posts about the Windows update system but I strongly believe (beliefs which are founded on facts and not opinions) Windows is a terribly designed OS which needs some major rework.

Right now it's a clusterfuck of dependencies with next to no flexibility. Reworking it to be more modular would help make it more stable and also enable things like patching without downtime. Modular designs are objectively better. I completely understand why Microsoft hasn't done it (it's a huge undertaking) but I think it's long overdo.

 

 

 

11 hours ago, leadeater said:

Having the default configuration as install all updates and reboot should be all that is required, then if someone wants to change that it's on them.

I completely agree, and that's what I want in Windows 10. That's not how it is though.

 

 

11 hours ago, leadeater said:

I can attest though giving users the choice generally doesn't work. Anyone that says they set their updates to manual only but still applies security updates regularly and in a timely manor where it would actually be effective to stop a breach is something I find very dubious. At one point we stopped enforcing reboots for 6 months to our 5000 staff/3000 staff computers (student labs not changed) to ensure updates were applied, the result was near enough to nil. Almost no one rebooted their device or took any initiative to install Windows Updates that were available in that time period, myself included lol. Granted this is a different situation to a home user but habits don't change a great deal.

Your anecdote might seem like it's related to what I was saying, but it's actually not at all like it.

What you did was go from forcing users to updates, to giving users control over updates. What I am suggesting is making it the default to have updates forced on users, but giving users the option to opt-out.

You went from one forced situation to another.

 

Think of it like this:

You have 8000 computers in your domain and you are forcing reboots to ensure updates are applied. Everything was fine.

You make a change so that all those 8000 computers all of a sudden in the hands of the users to choose when updates are applied, and after that everything was not fine (you forced that responsibility on your users).

How many of those 8000 computers do you think would be fine if instead of forcing anything, the default behavior was to have a timer for periodic reboots, but through a fairly hidden option with several warnings would disable it?

 

I doubt many people would change that setting. Most doesn't even know how to rearrange their monitors, and that's an option in the right click menu on the desktop.

 

That's what I am suggesting for Windows 10 Pro too. The situation we are in right now is bad. If Microsoft went with my suggestion the effects would be:

• It would have zero impact on the 99% of users who don't change their settings.
• The small group of people who refuse to install updates and are currently resorting to things like firewall blocks and disabling services would be happy that they no longer need to use extreme measurements which has big drawbacks.

For users it would either be completely neutral, or a positive change (depending on what type of user you are). I think the reason why Microsoft refuse to do this is purely philosophical. Microsoft wants PCs to move in a direction where have more control over computers, rather than the users.

 

I think the old Windows 7 update system was fantastic. There was only 1 issue with it (apart from the architectural issues with Windows as a whole) and that was that it forced users to make a decision about the update process right at the first startup. It should not have asked users if they wanted automatic updates or not. The option to turn updates off should have been hidden away in the control panel behind several confirmation and warning boxes.