December 2014, Windows 8 Market Share Loss, and what Writers Are Saying about It: NOTHING!

Year 2015 started pretty awfully for Windows 8.x.  There have been numbers going on and off, and all of them showing a drastic, unbelievable loss of market share for this OS.  

So far, the most impressive phenomenon is not the level of accuracy/inaccuracy that these figures show, but the extreme silence that has followed it.  Unlike what happened all the previous months, in which (Windows-friendly?) journalists used to trumpet the slight market share gains of Windows 8 in virtually every tech news site, right now you can barely find articles about this phenomenon.

Does that mean that, when it comes to Windows 8, a gain of 0.25 deserves a lot of press, but a gigantic market share drop (apparently caused by Windows XP!) is not interesting enough to be discussed or investigated? 

So far, you can count with your fingers the articles about this situation:

1.  Windows 8 core:  Although based in the stats that, as other people like to call it, "had a glitch", this article says the loss Windows 8.1 is "probably the biggest loss in market share since its launch back in October 2013", but it does not go beyond that.  Doesn't that deserve a little attention or something?  Apparently, not for this writer.


2. Winbeta:  This was the best!  The writer said that the drop was caused by Windows 10!!  Of course, the article was based on the old, "wrong" numbers.  Then, when the problem with the figures surfaced, the writer published a very informative "update":

 Net Applications has published new revised stats, according to which, Windows 7 holds 56.26% of market share, while Windows XP, which Microsoft stopped providing support for last year, has climbed up to 18.26% of usage. Similarly, Windows 8 now has 4.03% of the market dominance, and Windows 8.1 is now powering 9.49% of systems.
 
Way to go!  That's all?  He didn't even bother to modify the flamboyant title:

Desktop market share of Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 suffers as Windows 10 gains traction

I have been questioning this situation at Winbeta, and, besides getting one of my comments censored (I didn't offend anyone; I just pointed people to my compilation of numbers), I've received several replies from other people.  Most of them, if not all, are full of technical info explaining why I should understand that the "NT/XP" fiasco was a "glitch", but none to clarify why the big tech sites are not buzzing with activity, either investigating what happened with XP or with Windows 8.  Let's put it easily:  Readers need to be informed about what is going on.  If the press does not inform, then silence itself becomes informative.  

3.  Techradar: This site suggests (with disbelief) that the big loss was caused by Chromebooks.  Why not?  That makes sense...at least it does more than saying that it was XP that caused Windows 8's significant market share loss!

4. Investors: This article uses the "corrected" data.  Instead of deepening into the issue at question (the severe and "embarrassing" market share loss of Windows 8), the writer devotes half of the note to praise the beauties of Windows 10.  Please, that one has not even been released!  Can't we talk about the issues we are seeing now?

5.  Windows Central: In this one, the whole issue of Windows 8's shameful market share numbers is dismissed to favor Windows 10.  Wow!  A  0.06 growth of an experimental build (Windows 10, nowadays) is more important than the gigantic loss of the OS people are currently being FORCED to use, as it comes pre-installed in virtually every single PC? (except Italy: BRAVO ITALIANS!  HATS OFF TO YOU!!)

Why are writers doing this?  Are readers stupid?

Oh, the beauty of irony comes next!  Zdnet, traditionally favorable to Microsoft, comes to the rescue!  Ed Bott's article there criticizes the numbers and even goes beyond that.  He claims that "if the companies involved won't stop publishing this silly data, maybe it's time for the tech press to stop playing along and retire those monthly reports."

Is this a claim for silence?  :P  You know, some people could take this wrongly.  After all, it seems a very clever way to tell tech journalists to stay put when the numbers don't favor Microsoft.

But I think Mr.Bott totally hit the nail in his article.

The problem is that this is what Linux and MacOS users have been saying over and over, that these sites are biased and that their methods are flawed... so the credit is not for Mr.Bott.  Sorry.

Now, food for thought.  Since when were the numbers flawed?  Just December?  November?  Or was it from the beginning?

Maybe Mr.Bott and all the other tech journalists will want to investigate that now that they will have a lot of free time (because they won't have to be writing those annoying monthly reports about market share!)  :)

I sincerely hope so.  Let those "tech" journalists write real articles and not those Microsoft advertisements in disguise they have been feeding us with.

DISCLAIMER:  Maybe the lack of press surrounding this issue is because journalists at tech sites are on vacation!  ^__^

December Was a Disaster for Windows 8.x...Why Aren't We Hearing about It?

Just for curiosity, I checked out one of those market share sites that Windows users love to quote to remind others how well new Windows versions are doing.  I expected Windows 8 and 8.1 (they have to mention them as a combo to hide poor figures) to experience some growth after Season shopping.

However, what I found was surprising.

Windows 8 and 8.1 combined seemed to have lost a whooping 7.07% market share!  They went down from 18.65% in November to 11.58% in December.  That is something!  Why aren't we hearing about this in all the (pro-Windows) tech sites??

Here are the figures for November:

To sum up, these are the numbers:

 Windows 7= 56.41

Windows 8 + 8.1= 18.65

Windows XP= 13.57

MacOS X 10.10= 2.66

Windows Vista= 2.65

Linux= 1.25

Windows NT= 0.11

And here are the ones for December:

For those who are lazy to read, these are the new figures:

Windows 7= 54.57 (-1.84)

Windows 8 + 8.1= 11.58 (-7.07)

Windows XP= 14.22 (+0.65)

MacOS X 10.10= 3.48 (+.82)

Windows Vista= 2.54 (-0.11)

Linux= 1.74 (+0.49)

Windows 10= 0.03

As it can be seen, the combo of Windows 8 and 8.1 did pretty bad in December.  But where did the lost market share go?  Certainly, Mac OS X 10.10 gained some, XP gained some (really??) and Linux gained some, but that couldn't possibly account for the lost 7.07%.
Who stole Windows 8 market share in December last year?
Windows boosters will readily say "Windows 10 did."  However, Windows 10 has got a 0.03% market share so far, so that is not the answer.

Actually, this seems a bit hard to believe: it was Windows NT!  According to the site, it went from an almost invisible 0.11 to a jaw-dropping 7.64% in one month! That means a gain of  7.53%.
So, does this mean that Windows users preferred to go to Windows NT instead of using Windows 8?
It is really hard for me to believe it.  Still, what calls my attention more is why tech sites are not trumpeting this like crazy, as they used to trumpet the beauties of Windows 8.
Go figure!

EDIT:
Some writers at Winbeta seem to think that NT is Windows 10. Interestingly enough, netmarketshare.com went offline suddenly and when I accessed it to check out again the difference between Windows NT and Windows 10, I found that the statistics for December are not available.  Interesting...

Still, I managed to take a snapshot of the figures from October (when Windows 10 was introduced) to December, 2014 and marked the difference for those writers who read pie charts and draw conclusions, but don't read lists.  Have fun! :P

UPDATE:

More food for thought here.  Netmarketshare made December statistics available again after a rather weird pulldown and now it shows an entirely different story.  Take a look at the full pie chart and list of OSes below:

Let's see the changes side by side to keep track of the rather weird changes.  The plus sign and minus sign mean how the correction has affected each OS:

As it can be seen, with the exception of Windows NT, the correction has been beneficial to all Windows versions and it has eroded the market share of non-Windows OSes.

Now, the observations one cannot miss:

1.  Why would an apparent error in Windows NT market share affect all other Windows versions?  Shouldn't it affect only Windows 8.x and NT? 

2.  Why would this error affect all non-Windows OSes negatively?  What made MacOS X 10.10 and Linux go down if they are totally unrelated to NT?

3.  Apparently, the market share Windows 8.x lost was eaten away by WINDOWS XP.  SERIOUSLY??  Windows 7 did not get much in comparison!  XP went from 13.57% in November to 18.26% in December and took a sizable chunk of Windows 8.x's market share! (:P)

Honestly, the correction seems quite suspicious to me.  Some could say that this looks more like an attempt to cover up something that did not go well for Microsoft.  

Bottom line: You should question the credibility of these sites if you had not done before.  Something looks indeed fishy here!  

One More Year Using Linux

Year 2014 is almost over...and I used Linux every single day of it.  I used it for work, to get things done.  I also used it for leisure, to play games or to watch movies or listen to music.  I even made lots of memes to make fun of myself, err, to enjoy myself!  :P

I learned new things, of course.  But I am still far from calling myself a Linux guru or power user.  I haven't become a master of the CLI, either, but I feel much happier when I see that I am learning how my systems work.  In addition, little by little, I get Linux to do what I want (instead of only doing what the OS wants, as it is the case of other Operating Systems!).

Am I happy with Linux?  Yes.
Satisfied?  You bet.
Do I feel free?  Absolutely.
Do I feel part of a community?  Yes.  Actually, I'm part of several.  My contributions may not be big or great, but I'm happy to hear developers always appreciate them.

As I see it, I'll be using Linux next year, too!  :)

How to Fix the "A Weird Start Job Is Running..." Delay on Pardus 2.0

I decided to upgrade my Pardus 2.0 system.  After a long time downloading and installing the updates, I booted my system into the new Pardus with its 3.16 kernel.

Everything went fine, except for one thing: while booting, I noticed a message I had never seen before.  It was something like:

A start job is running for dev-disk-by (a long string of numbers here,

followed by the time count: x/1min30sec)

Fortunately, it actually lasted the one minute with 30 seconds it announced, but that made my boot time longer than 2 minutes!

Thanks to this Arch Linux forum, I could find the answer.  Basically, I had to edit the etc/fstab file to make it accurately point to my swap partition.  In my case, /dev/sda2.  

That took care of the issue and now my Pardus system boots normally.

Oh, and the upgrade seems to have fixed Steam.  Now I can play Violett again!  :P

Time for openmamba!!!

I had been wanting to install openmamba for some time now, but I did not want to do anything funny to my computers during the most stressing part of the year.  Right now, I got some free time on my hands and thus proceeded with my openmamba downloads and installation.  I decided to try the rolling releases.  Why?  Because I am more a kind of fixed release guy and wanted to do something new.  I downloaded first the 64 bit version (live CD) and tested it on my laptop.  It worked great but, due to software constraints, I couldn't really test the system.

Then, I went for the 32 bit live DVD (KDE).  This one was pretty complete, but I didn't want to install a 32 bit system on my 64 bit capable laptop so I downloaded the 64 bit live DVD.

However, I made my mind and tried the 32 bit DVD on my desktop, which uses that architecture.  My desktop is quite moody, so if the Italian mamba could get along with it, I could install it on my desktop instead.

Contrary to what I expected given the awkward configuration of my desktop, openmamba ran almost flawlessly.  All I had to do was enter alsamixer to disable "automute" and thus have my soundcard to work (that's and old trick I have to use anytime I don't hear anything when I try a distro.)

Desktop effects ran out of the box.  So did my wired connection and browser videos. 
Since openmamba is a fully independent distro, its software variety is pretty limited, but it does not lack functionality. I must say that a couple of my favorite applications are missing on the DVD (kolourpaint firefox, and showfoto), but at least the first two are available through Apper, its application manager.  Firefox, though, is pretty dated: version 17.

There seems to be a glitch in the plasma notifications when you download new apps.  It does not give you much information and presents you empty graphs or download speeds of zero.

So far, things seem to be going fine.  I've also applied several updates (as a good rolling distro, it shows updates very frequently) and nothing bad has happened.  Apparently, the bite of this mamba is not lethal!

December Ends...

The last month of 2014 is reaching its end, and with that, I can't help listing some of the events that came along with this year to my micro cosmos:

1.  The people at my workplace have realized (finally) that the university is indeed migrating to free software.  I'll stick with .odf and now they won't have any excuse against it.

2.  MEPIS has fell out of DW's top 100 list of Linux distros and is slowly going the way of the dodo, but MX is quickly rising.

3.  I haven't been able to write much here, but that pretty much means that, unlike some of my coworkers, I haven't had viruses havoc or malware slowing down my productivity.  Actually, my computers have been working without problems: I even managed to publish a book (yes, I used Libre Office to type it) and I am waiting to see how people will take it. 

4.  My participation with Mechatotoro at the International Conference held by our school went pretty well, even if we experimented again with some technologies for our presentations.  Of course, Windows was not part of them.

What will 2015 bring?

I've no idea.

December Starts!

...and it seems I just compiled a package from source for the first time.

I had been having problems with Wine (not the drink!) on Pisi Linux.  Apparently, I was not the only one.  Fortunately, a forum member by the name of poyraz76 kindly posted a solution on the forum.  I tried it and boy!  I had no idea what was going on!

The process took quite a long time, but at the end Wine started running the programs it did not run before (I especially needed JWPCe and Kanji Gold.)

I'm glad it worked.  Things are falling into place.  Now I have to do my homework and learn in more detail what happened. 

Also, I have a new challenge: teaching my mother how to create memes!