14 DAY TRIAL // Windows 7 reaching the end of life is without a doubt a key moment for the OS industry this year. According to third-party data provided by market analysis firm NetMarketShare, Windows 7 accounted for more than 25 percent of the entire PC market in December 2019, which means that 1 in 4 PCs were powered by an operating system whose demise was imminent.
At the same time, these numbers show that 25 percent of the global PC users now have to face a huge dilemma: should we stick with Windows 7, move to Windows 10, or jump ship to Linux or macOS?
There’s no universal answer to this question, and it’s up to each user to decide which way to go. But in the last 24 hours or so, I’ve noticed an overwhelming enthusiasm in the Linux world, as many expect Windows users to migrate en-masse to the open-source world.
Ubuntu, Linux Lite, Linux Mint, and a few other Linux distros have all been specifically optimized to serve as familiar homes for Windows users making the jump to Linux, and unsurprisingly, their developers see the death of Windows 7 as a major opportunity to increase their install base.
This isn’t necessarily unexpected, however. Linux has long been considered a rival or alternative to Windows, so features that would make the transition smoother for former Microsoft users were absolutely mandatory.
But is Windows 7 going dark reason enough to believe Linux should expect an influx of new adopters? Not at all.
First and foremost, look at the existing Windows 7 userbase this way: users who are still running it do it for a good reason. Most of them don’t agree with Microsoft’s modern Windows push, or Windows as a Service as the Redmond-based software company calls it, so sticking with Windows 7 is the only way to retain a traditional Windows experience.
In other words, these users just want something that looks and feels like home, without changes that would eventually force them to learn how to use a PC. These users are unlikely to migrate to Linux.
Second of all, it’s the security thing that Linux distro makers bet big on to attract Windows users. Canonical, for example, claims Windows 7 can move to Ubuntu to benefit from extra security without the need for hardware upgrades.
But then again, Windows 7 users who are still running the 2009 operating system at a time when the end of support has already been reached don’t care much about security, and honestly, these users are unlikely to migrate to Linux.
Then, some say that power users running Windows 7 are more likely to switch to Linux. In general, power users are indeed more interested in exploring the non-Windows world, but as far as Windows 7 is concerned, this is not the case. Simply because power users no longer run Windows 7, and most of them have already upgraded to Windows 10 simply because they were aware of the approaching end of support way before it happened.
There are Windows users who simply don’t care about the lack of updates, and of course, there are those who run pirated Windows for playing games and watching movies. Again, these users are unlikely to migrate to Linux, simply because the Windows 7 EOL doesn’t bring any major change to their devices.
If there’s anyone more likely to consider the switch to Linux now that Windows 7 is unsupported, it’s the enterprise business. Although I have my doubts that a substantial number of companies would be interested in a switch to Linux, there are organizations out there exploring such a transition mostly because of the Windows licensing costs. However, as others discovered the hard way, while Linux as a platform is free, there are other costs associated with a potential migration, including technical support and staff training. And at the end of the day, many might just feel more comfortable to stay with Windows in the long term.
All in all, no, I don’t think users would migrate en-masse to Linux now that support for Windows 7 has come to an end. In fact, I don’t expect such a thing to happen anytime soon in the first place.
Linux has its own place in the tech industry and those who use it have their own reasons, very often related to security, support for older hardware, or even the community overall. But at the end of the day, I doubt that Linux can pick up too many new users due to changes in the Windows world.