Microsoft Windows Vista was released into retail on January 30, 2007, and there’s not been many nice words said about it since. It suffered from being incompatible with much of existing hardware and software, problems with drivers, imposing annoying security procedures on users, and more.

It seemed like everyone loved to hate poor Vista, enough to earn it a spot on the list of “Top ten terrible tech products.”

So today we can say happy fifth birthday to Windows Vista. But what does it look like around the world when it comes to the use of Vista? Is anyone still using the much-maligned OS?

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We could read the headline “Windows 7 just became the most widely used desktop OS in the world” earlier this year.

For Microsoft this must have been welcome news as it announced that Windows 7 for the first time ever was used on more computers to browse the web than Windows XP.

We know that Microsoft wants users to retire Windows XP, so does this spell out the doom for the aging OS, which went into retail sales ten years ago in 2001?

We pulled out the latest statistics to investigate and we found that Windows XP is still alive and well in large parts of the world.

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In October, Windows 7 usage has for the first time surpassed Windows XP usage globally according to statistics from StatCounter. In other words, Windows 7 just became the most widely used desktop OS in the world.

This has been a long time coming. Windows XP has been at the top for eons (it launched 10 years ago, and once established, didn’t let go). Windows Vista never managed to threaten XP, so it wasn’t until Windows 7 came around that a shift really started to happen.

And that shift has happened fast. Windows 7 launched in October of 2009, then…

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As a server OS, Linux has long been highly successful and a poster child for open source. For example, Linux currently powers a majority of the world’s web servers and supercomputers. As a desktop OS, however, Linux has yet to gain mainstream acceptance.

That said, there are some countries where people have embraced Linux on the desktop to a greater degree than most.

Since you probably wouldn’t be able to guess which these countries are no matter how hard you tried, we have highlighted them in this article. Read on to find out where desktop Linux is most popular, plus some nice bonus stats.

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We noticed an interesting thing the other day that we’d like to share with you. However, if you’re a Linux enthusiast, you may want to stop reading now…

These are the operating system stats for April for the United States.

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It’s finally happened. After a long reign at the top, Microsoft’s Windows XP is no longer the most widely used desktop operating system in the United States, instead turning the crown over to Windows 7.

As of April, Windows 7 has 31.71% of the desktop operating system market, compared to 31.56% for Windows XP.

Here is the current distribution of desktop operating systems in the United States, based on the first seven days of April.

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Pardon the wordplay on “dog-eat-dog world,” but as you’ll see it applies perfectly to what is going on with Windows in the desktop OS space.

Because there are several interesting things going on. Some quite expected, others not so much.

First of all, the situation now is that Windows 7 has made a real splash. It’s already passed Windows Vista and is getting closer and closer to that clunky old workhorse that refuses to die, Windows XP.

This is how the different versions of Windows were divided one year ago, versus now…

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Where do you think Apple’s iPhone is the most popular? Where does Nokia’s Symbian phones dominate? How is it going for Android in different parts of the world? What about Blackberry?

We’re going to answer all of those questions and more in this article, which will closely examine mobile OS usage across the world.

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These days it seems like Android is on the lips of every tech geek out there, and it is arguably one of the most successful Linux-based products ever. But Android is not the only Linux-based mobile OS in town. Far from it.

In fact, Linux is such a common base for mobile operating systems that you may very well have used feature phones or smartphones running Linux without ever realizing it.

Here we will present 10 Linux-based mobile OSs other than Android, and these aren’t even all that exist.

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The two mobile platforms with the most apps are Google’s Android with around 95,000 apps, and Apple’s iOS with around 250,000 apps.

Those are impressive numbers, but this article isn’t about the sheer number of apps available. Instead, we wanted to focus on a very interesting distinction between the two platforms: The radical difference in the ratio between free and paid apps.

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