You can see that pent-up demand in the jump between July 2015 and September 2015. And people who were still on Windows 7 were missing out on some of the nice quality-of-life additions and under-the-hood improvements that Windows 8 added. Windows 8 and 8.1 were not well-loved, to put it mildly, and Windows 10 was framed as a response to (and a fix for) most of Windows 8's user interface changes. Windows 11's adoption looks slow compared to Windows 10, but Windows 10's adoption was also exceptionally good. But there are other compelling explanations. That could be because users have an older unsupported CPU or have one or more of the required security features disabled Secure Boot and the firmware TPM module were often turned off by default on new motherboards for many years. At least some of this slow adoption is caused by those system requirements - many of the PCs surveyed by Steam probably can't install Windows 11. It's easy to interpret these results as an indictment of Windows 11, which generated some controversy with its relatively stringent (and often poorly explained) security-oriented system requirements. Three-quarters of all Steam computers in 2022 are still running Windows 10.

As of March 2022, Windows 11 runs on just under 17 percent of Steam computers - about one in six. Six months after its release, Windows 10 ran on 31 percent of all Steam computers - nearly one in three. Ars Technica's Andrew Cunningham combed through Steam Hardware & Software Survey data 'to see how Windows 11 is fairing with enthusiasts.' An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report: Steam users are migrating to Windows 11 about half as quickly as they moved to Windows 10.

Windows 11 launch day