Friday, January 16th 2026
TechPowerUp Readers Willing to Move Away from Windows after Windows 10 EOL: Frontpage Poll
In Q4 2025, we asked our readers if in the light of Microsoft discontinuing Windows 10 and rising dissatisfaction with Windows 11, they would consider moving away from Windows altogether to alternative operating systems. The results are fascinating. Over the quarter, our frontpage poll gathered over 34,000 responses. A significant majority of 55.4% (18,981 readers) voted that they would consider moving away from Windows to Linux. What's more interesting is that only 4.5% (1,538 readers) say that they're willing to move to macOS (replace their PC with a Mac of some shape or form). A marginal 1.9% say they are willing to give up the PC as their main client computing device, and switch to a game console, such as the latest Xbox Series S/X or PlayStation 5; and probably stick to endpoints handed out by their work/school.
These three responses add up to 61.8%, or nearly two-thirds of our readers being disillusioned with Windows. 38.2%, or 13,105 readers answered that they will not consider moving away from Windows. The poll suggests a general sense of dissatisfaction with being restricted to Windows 11. Comments suggest that this stems from its interface being seen by some as a downgrade from Windows 10, besides its latest slew of other Microsoft products, such as 365, Copilot, Teams, and Bing, being seen as invasive or bloatware.
These three responses add up to 61.8%, or nearly two-thirds of our readers being disillusioned with Windows. 38.2%, or 13,105 readers answered that they will not consider moving away from Windows. The poll suggests a general sense of dissatisfaction with being restricted to Windows 11. Comments suggest that this stems from its interface being seen by some as a downgrade from Windows 10, besides its latest slew of other Microsoft products, such as 365, Copilot, Teams, and Bing, being seen as invasive or bloatware.
104 Comments on TechPowerUp Readers Willing to Move Away from Windows after Windows 10 EOL: Frontpage Poll
And overall Windows is just more plug and play.
Most are using blanket statements.
Most anticheat works fine on Linux.
Kernel anticheat like BF6 absolutely does not.
I can use Windows for EVERYTHING:
¿i want to game? i just load ANY game from practically the dawn of PC to know and it WORKS on any storefront, i have BF6 and any game with anticheat works.
I need to do productive stuff?, i load whatever software i need, adobe CC specially and i don't need to bother with any gremlins, same with handbrake, networking tools, etc
I need text editing: notepad++ i have dozens of open files at the same time, there's still not a comparable editor in linux.
I need light editing of photos?, windows photo app, i can even delete backgrounds in a single click with the included AI tools, without even needing photoshop.
I need fancontrol?, i load fancontrol, it works
I need nvidia broadcast for webcam effects and the best audio noise reduction
I need all the specific software for my peripherals, i load logitech g suite and it works.
I need the software for my clone streamdeck, it works
With Linux i run into roadblocks since starting it:
No nvidia broadcast
no logitech software
no fan control(that i know of)
no adobe software
no stream deck software
Everyone says "well, then dual boot when you want to do that other stuff", NO, why would i waste my time like that?, what if i want to game whilst i have my productive stuff open at an alt+tab distance?, i do that all the time i have everything open, bnot to mention it's almost impossible to maintain a perfectly identical browsing profile (i use firefox with 800+ open tabs in 10+ groups) between both OS.
If everything works perfectly and how it should in windows, why would i bother to make my life miserable by wasting time dual booting when linux would hardly work for anything?
And if i want to play something else whilst in windows then i should boot into linux to play that other game... that would also work in windows, so i end up either installing same game twice or wasting time...
so no, there's no replacement for windows, ANY of the things i've listed by themselves are enough to roadblock the idea.
I'll keep using win10, i don't care about any security updates, at least until the base software i use stops updating or supporting win10
Importantly the extremely popular games like Fortnite and BF6, or League of Legends, it's no. Whereas the site is a list of all games with anticheat including indie games, and assigns them all equal weighting for that final percentage. I'd be interested to see what kind of percentage would be the result of daily players having weighting.
Valorant doesn't work but CS2 does because Valve, I think that's the most popular game that is supported.
areweanticheatyet.com/
Just saying I would have no issue paying for a linux distro instead of w11 if I get full control of the OS, even if it's free I'd probably donate just because.
Be nice to see Mint/Zorin/a few others become a fully fledged windows replacement/alternative.
hmmmm interesting
www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows/zorin-os-18-has-reached-2-million-downloads-with-1m-windows-defections-fueling-one-of-linuxs-biggest-growth-stories-in-2026
This is my entire year of staying on any Linux distro. SteamOS is arch linux based.
People always exagerate issues like having to use command lines and software support (not perfect but way better now) but doesn't realize these days most applications are online that it makes OS less important. I can understand for people who really needs Windows 10 but those aren't the majority. Older people mostly use like social media, email, banking and youtube. I can say same with younger people who grew up with smartphone only. When I built PCs for free with Linux Mint they had no issues. It really shows how the internet now makes daily task more universal.
DeMicrosoft is something that really helps. I used Samsung Dex as my desktop for a year. I had to sell most of my things including my PC except monitor and storages before moving to another country. It was a Samsung Note 9 with a cracked screen that can still be connected to a monitor with a USB 3.0+hdmi hub. I did play games limited to PS2/PS1 emulator, couple of Android games and even tried WPS office as main.
People dont realize a lot of things change since 2010 and I can understand why people say that. I will point this out that I am not that good at understanding command lines. I just want things to work which I did.
Something I don't miss setting up a Windows PC is finding drivers and turning off telemtry and disable services. For me I just need Brave, Steam, Protonup, Lutris, LibreOffice and couple of emulators.
Reason why I say this. I don't want to give a wrong idea. I know people here aren't like me so I would point out what I do on my PC. Its not much but for me it is.
Linux gaming, while not perfect, has come a very long way in recent years. Rare I have issues with the titles I care about. Seems the pace of improvement is accelerating, and I love it.
The only things that don't work are games dependant on the EA or Ubisoft launchers, but luckily, I play those extremely rarely.
But even the ones that are not as invasive, such as Battleye, is a show-stopper for Linux users. :(
Simple example.
I bought Asus Tuf Gaming B850-Plus. It has WiFi 7, 2.5G LAN and Bluetooth v5.4. I like Mint, but the latest build has kernel version 6.14, not the latest. Unfortunately only WiFi worked. Kernel 6.14 didn't have drivers for latest hardware. Mint is an Ubuntu derivative, so I installed Ubuntu 25 with 6.17 kernel and everything works. I had no hardware issues whatsoever. AMD GPU's don't need proprietary driver either.
With AM4 you go with Mint 22.3 and forget what installing drivers is.
You might argue it's a hassle and you only install manufacturers drivers under Windows for it to work. Those drivers don't always work as intended and in some cases you need particular version, which is common with laptops. With Linux I forgot I need to install drivers. Stuff just works.
:(Often, vice-versa here, because I have been seeing broken Windows 11 updates during summer and fall, 2025.
Looks like I'll have a rig with Nobara on it for when I'm forced to reinstall Windows 11, as if it were Vista. Vista was broken AF, too and to some degree, 7 was too and 8x.
8x, with 8.1, had random Windows Update failures. 8x was infamous for random Windows Update error codes for critical updates, IIRC.
In theory, I'd love to, it sounds great on paper when it all works, and it's obvious it works well for many. But in reality there's to many unknowns, effort barriers and learning required when my pc is a combo of a tool that already is fit for use and purpose, and a gaming rig where I have zero issues with gaming related to Windows, and it has multiple users.
I got a family and a full time job man, I ain't got time for this.
Intel has the best record, overall.
There were reports that Radeon was bad in Linux, support would be broken due to software issues. I would hope by now that the Radeon support is top-notch.
I dont understand where this idea of Linux still being hard to use comes from. I have my whole family on it. Dad, Mom, Sister, Grandma, they all use Linux full time without issue. None of them are what I would consider remotely "tech literate". The only bump in the road was PDFs from the state retirement system, which will ONLY open in Adobe Reader, so Grandma and Dad needed virtual machines with windows to open them.
Do you occasionally need Terminal to fix something? Yeah. Is it more common then needing CMD to fix Windows? Nope. Does it matter? Absolutely not. Because when normies have an issue, they call their TECH GUY, regardless of which OS they run. There's still things missing, like a Google Drive Desktop application for Linux doesnt exist, which sucks, but then I moved to Proton Drive anyway and the family just manually upload stuff to their drives; overall it ahs been a wonderful experience.
Recently I got to take 16 days off around Christmas. Coming back to work and having to use Windows again was like deja vu of the first week running just Linux at home. It's pretty easy to get used to running the penguin these days.nVidia is still just as easy to use today as it was before, You just use their drivers.
Intel does work well, there are some cases of longstanding bugs for games though. Tropico 5 needs a command line string to avoid a black screen, for example.
The reports of AMD being bad are a decade out of date. AMD open sourced their drivers in late 2017, by 2020 they were in comparable shape to nVidia and today they are by far the best on the market, with the caveat that they are tied to MESA version, which was a problem until recently on Ubuntu distros. Today anything remotely modern is well supported and even first gen GCN is being maintained by one guy.
The only problem is that in rare cases when something doesn't work, you're in for a bumpy ride (luckily, that hasn't happened to me, touch wood).Linux is a community, there are lots of people happy to help you through the unknowns, of which, there isn't as many as you think. :)
For starters, your desktop environment matters. If you choose a distro with KDE, you're in for pretty much Windows-like look and feel with barely anything new to learn. I also like Cinnamon, but it usually comes with the old X11 display compositor which doesn't support VRR or HDR screens. KDE is also a touch more Windows-y so to speak, comes with Wayland (for HDR and VRR), and is more configurable.
Then comes your distro. Debian-based ones like Ubuntu and Mint are stable, but don't have cutting-edge hardware support. That is, if you buy an Nvidia 60-series, or AMD 10-series (or whatever they will call it) GPU straight at launch, you'll be waiting for drivers for a while. Arch has drivers ready pretty quickly, but it's "the fiddly Linux" for pros, so I'd leave that alone, unless you choose Manjaro (an Arch-derivative) with KDE. Fedora and its derivatives are a good middle ground. Fedora comes with KDE as well. The only time you'd have to mess around is with the Nvidia drivers.
Or if this is too much reading and hassle (I don't blame you if it is), then Just go with Bazzite (a gaming-oriented Fedora derivative) with the pre-installed Nvidia drivers and call it a day. :)
As for online games, I wouldn't get rid of Windows straight away. Personally, I have it installed on my second SSD, and I switch the boot order if needed. You can also ask for a dual boot setup upon installing Linux, but that can cause problems as it touches the bootloader on your Windows drive, so personally, I wouldn't recommend it.
Then comes work... if you need Microsoft apps for working from home, then you can either do the above (have two OSes installed), or just disregard this post entirely and stay on Windows. :)
This meme pretty much sums it up:
No offense to anyone - the above is intended purely for fun. :D
I tried Ubuntu and seen my dad running Mint on his laptop, it seems pretty breezy for his laptop (his is old Lenovo Core2Duo with 2GB of RAM) that can even browse modern web and YouTube but....I don't know Linux is just not for me. I don't know what future might bring, or even Windows 12 even a thing, but my desktop still using Windows 10 and my handheld is Windows 11, despite the advancement of Linux for gaming. I don't play any online game, I strictly play offline single player games it should be easy for me to do the transition and yet I'm not. I have various PC that runs 98SE, XP, 7 using their almost period correct hardware.
I wanted to switch to Arch and install KDE myself, but as soon as I stumbled upon the Arch website, my entire brain went NOOOPE, not gonna happen! :laugh:
I might go with Fedora KDE one day just to feel what a "pure" (a non-derivative) distro is like.