According to Statcounter, Windows 11 held a 55.18% market share in October 2025. That share dropped to 53.7% in November and dropped again in December. Now, Windows 11 holds a 50.73% market share.
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/windows/desktop/worldwide
Many are rollback to Windows 10, but Linux is increasing as well.
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide
Just switched to Linux. Convinced sis in law to try linux as she was having driver issues. Wife is about to try it on our laptop. Linux has reached a point of, it just works. It can play windows games better than windows, so no reason not to.
How hard is it for laymen people to install and use it? Are there step by step instruction available?
I’ve had a techy mate have issues installing mint, but I had no issues and have dailied it as an OS only reverting to windows in extreme cases.
If you’re not dual booting it’s simple as. My friend has had issues dual booting on the same drive, whereas I went one drive per OS and butter smooth. Nice to be able to recover one drive from another without external tools.
This is the official Linux Mint installation guide: https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/
You may very well need specific instructions to convince your motherboard to boot to the Linux live USB media.
(Edit: As suggested below: You may need to find and toggle “secure boot” to “off” in BIOS. The point of “secure boot” is to prevent exactly the kind of change you are about to make. You can turn it back on later, if you have a use for it.)
Although, if you replace the Windows harddrive with a blank harddrive, many motherboards will then do the right thing and boot to the Linux live USB key.
(Warning: Get your files off the Windows drive first. The windows drive is probably encrypted, and so won’t be useful for recovering files later.)
Getting booted into the Linux live media is by far the hardest part.
Once you’re booted into the Linux Mint Live USB key, make sure Linux Mint detected and is able to get on the Internet. You’ll need your wifi password.
Once you’re happy with that, click “Install Linux Mint” and just follow the prompts. The hardest question for me was remembering what my time zone is.
Linux Mint will tell you when to reboot, and will even remind you to remove the Live Media USB key.
Reboot and enjoy Linux.
Yep most BIOSes will have a toggle for Secure Boot. Make off.
Getting a modern motherboard to boot to a USB key is still a royal pain in the ass.
(Edit: I forget that windows ships full disk encrypted now. Be sure to get your backups off of the Windows drive first!)
Once the Linux live USB is up, just click install and then “next” a bunch of times.
Pretty straightforward actually, plenty of distros even ship their own USB flasher tool so that you don’t have to use rufus.
Definitely step by step instructions available and even official videos now.
Which distro would you recommend for gaming? I usually hear people like Mint for that.
Bazzite or CachyOS (Bazzite for ease, CachyOS for performance).
Mint is good for gaming and simple for most people but there are other distros which run newer versions of software or/and has more access to software. I generally use distros based on arch, such as EndeavourOS with the caveat that they sometimes break.
Bazzite has been excellent on my older AM4 desktop with mid range AMD card. Steam came ready to roll and performance was so close to Win 10 LTSC, that I have yet to try a different distro.
I can’t recommend Bazzite. You can’t install new drivers if something doesn’t work right out of the box and that is just a complete no go for many people.
Yes, Bazzite adds complexity due to its immutable nature.
But then again, if you have driver issues on Linux (which has become reasonably rare these days), they’re hard to resolve either way, particularly as a beginner.