I had dabbled in it off and on since LONG LONG ago, but I only went full time (no dual boot) since windows 11 release. So yeah, I bet there's lots others like me.

[–] doughless@lemmy.world 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

I had been dual booting for a while with Windows 11/Fedora until one day I needed to update the BIOS on my motherboard. Windows decided it was too big of an upgrade and wanted me to activate again. I called support, and they said that I had used up all my activations and would need to buy a new copy.

Thanks Microsoft, for helping me switch full time to Linux!

[–] barsquid@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

They force you to re-buy the same software for literally the same hardware. That's insane.

[–] doughless@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

For more context, it was a Windows 8.1 license I upgraded to 11. But yes, still crazy they let it "expire" when using the exact same hardware. My theory is that because the BIOS update changed my TPM keys, Windows couldn't tell that it was the same hardware.

[–] Grass@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 months ago

wait that's a thing? I guess I'd never find out because I always used whatever activation method was available on MDL for each version for the odd time I used windows.

[–] vividspecter@lemm.ee 3 points 3 months ago

That spike in 2021 looks to be around the win11 release date, although it pretty much dropped the same amount after. Does look to be a sharper trend in adoption since then, though (with all of the caveats about what the data is measuring of course).

[–] Zangoose@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

[–] ililiililiililiilili@lemm.ee 2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Thanks! It does indeed look like people try out Linux before the new Windows release. Then it returns to the slower adoption trend.

[–] Zangoose@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

It's also interesting because you can also see a steeper line corresponding on the "worse" windows versions (8, 11) while it's relatively stagnant during windows 10

[–] miridius@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

Actually windows market share is growing as well. It's MacOS that's dropping