3 ms·

So I moved from Win 11 to Fedora Workstation some months back. I dual-booted back into Windows once or twice to check something, to upgrade my audio receiver w

So I moved from Win 11 to Fedora Workstation some months back. I dual-booted back into Windows once or twice to check something, to upgrade my audio receiver with a serial port, that sort of stuff. Everyone talks about execs monitoring metrics. What sort of metric would I have registered as? You see a desktop that's on 24/7 suddenly going offline. There's no way these people find out indirectly that I'm now using Linux on the same hardware. What are they going to do, somehow correlate my user agent string when I hit one of their websites or SSO endpoints? I mean, it's possible but I am wondering how much of this topic is wish fulfillment fantasy.

3eb7988a1663 6mo ago
Losing market share to ChromeOS and Apple has to be the most significant and obvious hit. The Steam Deck and second generation Steam Machines are also likely to nibble away at the edges. I am not a Mac person, I actually hate a lot of how they operate. Yet, if a tech-illiterate friend were looking for advice, I would likely steer them towards those computer appliances so as to avoid Microsoft's nonsense.
evanelias 6mo ago
If a decent number of people migrate away, it would definitely show up in aggregate: Windows Update traffic, for example. Or sales of Windows-specific software/subscriptions. It doesn't require correlated tracking at an individual customer level to see the broader trend.
ninjagoo 6mo ago
> What sort of metric would I have registered as? Monthly average user. Uptime for Win 11. Uptime not counting screensaver. Uptime for non-enterprise consumer. If you were a Win 11 enterprise user, then Uptime for enterprise users. Unique hardware indicators - number of distinct PCs in Win 11 ecosystem, separated from new activations. And I'm sure a few others that I haven't thought of. Declining stats on these measures indicate a problem somewhere in the Win 11 ecosystem. Combine with competitor indicators like sales, and other Win ecosystem OSes. A single person switching probably doesn't do much to move the indicators. But as a collective?
- mancerayder 6mo ago
  Yes for sure. My point is they won't know if I moved to Mac, Linux or just a Chromebook, or just decided to stop using a desktop PC.
  - estimator7292 6mo ago
    They'll notice if no Windows machines phone home from your IP address anymore. It doesn't matter so much what you switched to, more that you're no longer giving Microsoft those sweet, sweet KPIs
- DarkUranium 6mo ago
  Considering Win11 being, well, Win11, I wouldn't be surprised if they were sending partition tables of hard drives to detect other OSes. They won't be able to detect which Linux distro it is that way, but they'd definitely know it's ext4 or whatnot, which heavily implies Linux.

3eb7988a1663 6mo ago

Losing market share to ChromeOS and Apple has to be the most significant and obvious hit. The Steam Deck and second generation Steam Machines are also likely to nibble away at the edges. I am not a Mac person, I actually hate a lot of how they operate. Yet, if a tech-illiterate friend were looking for advice, I would likely steer them towards those computer appliances so as to avoid Microsoft's nonsense.

evanelias 6mo ago

If a decent number of people migrate away, it would definitely show up in aggregate: Windows Update traffic, for example. Or sales of Windows-specific software/subscriptions. It doesn't require correlated tracking at an individual customer level to see the broader trend.

ninjagoo 6mo ago

> What sort of metric would I have registered as? Monthly average user. Uptime for Win 11. Uptime not counting screensaver. Uptime for non-enterprise consumer. If you were a Win 11 enterprise user, then Uptime for enterprise users. Unique hardware indicators - number of distinct PCs in Win 11 ecosystem, separated from new activations. And I'm sure a few others that I haven't thought of. Declining stats on these measures indicate a problem somewhere in the Win 11 ecosystem. Combine with competitor indicators like sales, and other Win ecosystem OSes. A single person switching probably doesn't do much to move the indicators. But as a collective?

mancerayder 6mo ago
Yes for sure. My point is they won't know if I moved to Mac, Linux or just a Chromebook, or just decided to stop using a desktop PC.
- estimator7292 6mo ago
  They'll notice if no Windows machines phone home from your IP address anymore. It doesn't matter so much what you switched to, more that you're no longer giving Microsoft those sweet, sweet KPIs
DarkUranium 6mo ago
Considering Win11 being, well, Win11, I wouldn't be surprised if they were sending partition tables of hard drives to detect other OSes. They won't be able to detect which Linux distro it is that way, but they'd definitely know it's ext4 or whatnot, which heavily implies Linux.