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Windows Drops Under 60% in Global Desktop OS Share

By ckasprzak | TkOut | July 10, 2026 | Linux, Microsoft Windows, Software
The Hot Take: Linux seems to be hovering and Windows is apparently listening to it's end users Finally. We'll see where this goes.

StatCounter's June 2026 data shows Windows made up 56.55% of global desktop OS usage, dropping Microsoft's share below 60% for the first time in years. Linux, meanwhile, reached 4.39%, "one of its strongest recent showings in the company's desktop OS statistics," reports Linuxiac. From the report: Apple's desktop platforms also remain a major part of the picture. StatCounter lists OS X at 11.89% and macOS at 4.48% for June 2026, meaning Apple's combined desktop presence remains comfortably ahead of Linux in the global chart. Chrome OS follows with 1.21%. Of course, StatCounter's numbers should be read for what they are: web usage statistics, not a direct count of installed operating systems. The company calculates its Global Stats from page views across websites using its tracking code, analyzing details such as browser, operating system, and screen resolution. In other words, the figures reflect measured web activity rather than the number of machines actually installed worldwide. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Windows 11 will soon be able to reinstall itself and your drivers without a USB drive via new 'Cloud Rebuild' recovery method

By ckasprzak | TkOut | July 9, 2026 | Microsoft Windows, Software
The Hot Take: Nice, but all to push cloud storage I'm assuming.

Microsoft has announced another new recovery method for Windows 11 PCs that will allow users to reinstall the OS using the cloud. The new recovery tool is called Cloud Rebuild which will restore a PC to a "clean, known-good state by performing an entire OS reinstall."The new Cloud Rebuild feature will download the Windows OS along with your devices drivers, and seamlessly install them during the recovery process so that your device is fully functional once the OS reinstalled, all without needing an external USB install drive."Unlike Reset this PC, Cloud rebuild downloads both the target Windows image and the device's drivers from Windows Update, so the device comes back fully functional without USB media, without a custom image, and without depending on the health of the currently installed OS."The new cloud rebuild option in the Windows Recovery environment. (Image credit: Microsoft)Reset this PC has had its own cloud download option for a while, but that feature is only useful when the Windows OS is bootable, and acquires drivers from the device locally. In scenarios where the OS has become unbootable, the new Cloud Rebuild option will be a life saver. Cloud Rebuild also doesn't include an option to maintain apps and files. Reset this PC includes an option to maintain all your data across the reset, but Cloud Rebuild is strictly for reinstalling the Windows OS as a clean slate with device drivers. The new Cloud Rebuild recovery option is now rolling out in preview to Windows Insiders in the latest Windows 11 preview builds, so it's not generally available just yet but it should begin rolling out to everyone in the coming months.Join us on Reddit at r/WindowsCentral to share your insights and discuss our latest news, reviews, and more.

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Zombie ‘who owns Unix?’ lawsuit comes alive again

By ckasprzak | TkOut | July 6, 2026 | Software
The Hot Take: Unix trying to come back from the grave? Or just a patent troll wanting another pay day?

The ancient dispute over ownership of UNIX, and perhaps Linux too, has returned to court. Again. As The Register has explained many, many, times since this matter first went to court in 2003, the roots of the case are the 1998 alliance between IBM and a company called the Santa Cruz Operation which sold a version of UNIX for x86 CPUs. Those two companies, plus Intel and Sequent, created “Project Monterrey” – an effort to create a unified version of UNIX that could run on multiple processors. By 2001, Project Monterrey was close to delivering a unified UNIX, an achievement made possible by blending code from IBM and SCO. By then, a little project called “Linux” already ran on multiple processors. Big Blue decided Linux was the future and bailed from Project Monterrey – then allegedly contributed some Monterrey code to the open-source project and to its own AIX and Z operating systems. SCO felt it owned some of that code, so sued IBM. SCO and its successors struggled to survive, but interested parties kept the lawsuit alive because the chance to emerge as owner of parts of the Linux codebase, and IBM’s code, had the potential to turn into a colossal payday. The case and its successors ended in 2021, with a settlement that saw litigants agree to end the matter without IBM admitting fault. But by then, SCO had sold its software to a biz called Xinuos that decided to fight on. The Xinuos case has burbled along quietly since, and on June 22nd reached the milestone of a hearing. The matter has become a little more modern, if only because this hearing was held online and the presiding judge appeared to unwittingly be on mute at one point. But the arguments otherwise seemed to revisit Project Monterrey, debated the relevance of past litigation, contested who owned what, when they owned it, and how they could prove it. Xinuos argued IBM never had a license for SCO code. Big Blue argued that it did nothing wrong. The core issue seems to be whether Xinuos even has the right to litigate the matter, or if some ancient legalese in the original agreements means the window for legal argument has long since expired. The matter continues and appears likely to do so until either the heat death of the universe or the year of Linux on the desktop – whichever comes sooner. ®

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I built a Linux container on Windows 11 without Docker Desktop, and Docker users should pay attention

By ckasprzak | TkOut | July 3, 2026 | Microsoft Windows, Software
The Hot Take: Nore more docker on Windows? Interesting.

Windows 11 can now build, run, and manage Linux containers on its own, without Docker Desktop in the background. Microsoft calls this WSL Containers, and after installing the preview and running a few real workloads through it, here is what works, what still needs Docker, and how to get it running on your own PC. WSL Container should not be confused with the next version of WSL 2, as we already covered how Microsoft shut down the WSL 3 rumors. It has now shipped as a public preview, so we installed it, built a custom container image from scratch, and pushed it through a few workflows to see where it holds up. What is WSL Container in Windows 11 WSL Container is a built-in feature of the Windows Subsystem for Linux that lets you create, run, and manage Linux containers directly from Windows, without installing Docker Desktop, Podman Desktop, or any other third-party runtime. It ships in two parts: The first is wslc.exe, a command-line tool that is added to your PATH as soon as you update WSL. Microsoft also ships an alias called container.exe, so both commands point to the same binary. Anyone who has used Docker before will recognize the syntax, since commands like wslc run, wslc build, and wslc container list look like Docker’s own structure almost one-for-one. The second part is a WSL Container API, distributed as a NuGet package with support for C, C++, and C#. Windows application developers can use it to embed Linux containers directly into their own apps. Instead of asking users to install a separate runtime, a Windows app can quietly spin up a Linux container in the background to run a piece of Linux-only code, then tear it down when the task finishes. Microsoft demoed this with Moonray, an open-source Linux rendering engine used on films like The Wild Robot, running inside a Windows executable with no visible sign that Linux was involved at all. Moonray is a Linux-based rendering engine that can run inside Windows through WSL Container Every Windows application that uses the API gets its own Hyper-V-backed virtual machine, separate from every other app’s container. The CLI flow gets its own VM too. Docker Desktop, however, runs every container inside one shared VM, which as you’d expect is more efficient. WSL Containers trade some resource efficiency for a hard isolation boundary between apps, which explains why Microsoft is pitching this as enterprise-ready. That said, both entry points talk to the same WSL service that already manages your regular distros, and inside the Linux VM, the container runtime doing the real work is Moby, the open-source engine that also powers Docker. Note that WSL Containers is not reinventing containers. It is, instead, giving Windows a first-party front door to them. How to install WSL Container on Windows 11 WSL Container only ships in the pre-release channel of WSL for now, so you will need to opt into that before wslc shows up on your PC. Open Windows Terminal or PowerShell as an administrator. Run wsl –update –pre-release and let it finish downloading. Restart WSL with wsl –shutdown command, then close and reopen your terminal. Confirm the install with wslc –version. You should see the version number 2.9.3.0, which confirms WSL Container is installed. Run wslc –help to see the full command reference and confirm the binary is working. In our test machine, the update took under two minutes over a decent connection. If wslc is not recognized right after the update, restart your terminal, and if that does not help, restart the PC. Since it’s in the pre-release channel, there might be some rough edges, as a few developers on Microsoft’s own devblog reported a Catastrophic failure, Error code: E_UNEXPECTED when running their first container. Fortunately, we didn’t face the issue. In case you are wondering, you do not need a Copilot+ PC to try this since WSL Container ships as a plain WSL component, but the Hyper-V-backed isolation model needs the support of modern virtualization, so a recent CPU with virtualization enabled in BIOS or UEFI counts for more here than it does for a regular WSL distro. Building and running a container with wslc Once wslc was working, we skipped the basic hello-world example everyone else is running and went straight to something closer to real use, building a custom image from a Containerfile and exposing a working service from it. Creating a project folder for WSL container test First, a quick sanity check. We pulled and ran a Debian container interactively: wslc run -it debian:latest Inside the container, running uname -a returned a Linux kernel string tied to WSL2, confirming we were sitting inside a real Linux environment instead of some translation layer. Running uname -a inside a WSL container confirms it is a real Linux kernel, not a translation layer Detaching with Ctrl+P, Ctrl+Q and running wslc ps -a listed the container by its autogenerated name (mossy_sawtooth), alongside how long ago it started and its current status. wslc ps -a lists every container, whether it is running or has already stopped Reattaching with wslc attach mossy_sawtooth dropped us straight back into the same shell. reattaching to the container name mossy_sawtooth Next, we wrote a Containerfile, which works the same way a Dockerfile does, to package a small Linux inspection utility that runs file, exiftool, and binutils against whatever gets dropped into it. The Containerfile packages a small Linux inspection tool, working the same way a Dockerfile does Here is roughly what that file looked like: FROM python:3.12-slim RUN apt-get update && \     apt-get install -y –no-install-recommends \         file exiftool binutils bsdmainutils coreutils && \     rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/* WORKDIR /app COPY requirements.txt . RUN pip install –no-cache-dir -r requirements.txt COPY app.py . EXPOSE 5000 CMD [“python”, “app.py”] Building it was one command: wslc build -t my-linux-inspector . Building the custom image with wslc build The build cached its base layers, so a rebuild finished in seconds instead of minutes. Running wslc image ls confirmed the image existed locally with a fresh timestamp. wslc image ls confirms the custom image built successfully From there, we started the container with a port mapping so the Flask server running inside Linux could be reached from Windows: wslc run -d -p 5000:5000 –name inspector my-linux-inspector Loading 127.0.0.1:5000 in a browser on the Windows side brought up the tool’s web interface without any extra networking setup. The Flask server inside the Linux container, reached through localhost on Windows with no extra networking setup A service running on a Linux kernel, reachable through localhost on Windows, with zero third-party software installed, sums up WSL Container in one sentence. Testing GPU access inside a WSL container GPU passthrough is the feature most developers doing AI or machine learning work will care about most, since it decides whether a Linux container can reach the graphics card instead of running on the CPU alone. WSL Container supports this through a --gpus all flag, the same syntax Docker users already know: wslc run --rm --gpus all pytorch/pytorch:2.5.1-cuda12.4-cudnn9-runtime \ python -c "import torch; print(torch.cuda.is_available())" The clip below shows this in action, a container reaching the GPU directly, then racing a compiled PyTorch model against the same model running in plain eager mode. The gap between the two is not subtle. https://www.windowslatest.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/testing-GPU-access-inside-a-WSL-container.mp4 WSL Container for enterprise environments Microsoft is pitching WSL Container as enterprise-ready from the preview stage. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint’s existing WSL plugin now understands container events, so security teams monitoring WSL distros get the same visibility into containers without deploying separate tooling, though the feature is currently limited to a private preview with its own signup form. IT admins can already control WSL Container today through Group Policy and an ADMX policy, with two capabilities that count most in a managed fleet: First, admins can decide whether people in their organization are allowed to use WSL distros, containers, or both. Second, and this is the one Microsoft says came up constantly in customer requests, admins can set an allowlist of which container registries are permitted, so a company can restrict pulls to an internal or approved registry instead of leaving Docker Hub wide open. We expect full Intune dashboard support for these settings within a few weeks of the preview shipping. VS Code’s Dev Containers extension also picked up wslc support starting in version 0.462.0-pre-release. Switching to it just means opening Dev Container settings, finding the Docker Path field, and changing it to wslc, no need to reinstall extensions or reconfigure projects. What is still missing from WSL Container WSL Container does not ship with anything resembling Docker Compose at this stage, so multi-service projects that use a compose.yaml file to bring up a database, a backend, and a cache together are not a good fit yet. Every container we tested had to be started individually. And of course, the biggest omission is that there is also no GUI dashboard, or anything like Docker Scout for scanning images. Also, the extensive plugin ecosystem that Docker Desktop has built up over the years does not exist here. WSL Container is not meant to replace Docker Desktop, Podman Desktop, or Rancher Desktop, and all three of those tools stand to benefit from the same low-level platform work, including the new virtiofs file system that Microsoft says makes Windows file access twice as fast inside containers. Networking has also been reworked with an experimental mode called Consomme, which relays Linux traffic through the Windows networking stack instead of the older NAT setup, aimed at fixing the VPN and proxy compatibility issues that have annoyed WSL users for years. Both virtiofs and Consomme are currently exclusive to WSL Container, though Microsoft has said it wants to bring them to regular WSL distros eventually. Should you switch from Docker Desktop yet For a single container running a database or a small service during local development, WSL Container already does the job without asking for a separate license. For anything that needs Compose files, multiple linked services, or Docker’s extension ecosystem, Docker Desktop is still the more complete tool for now. Microsoft is targeting WSL Container’s general availability for fall 2026, and given how closely the CLI’s syntax already tracks Docker’s, most of what is missing looks like a matter of when rather than if. If you already run Linux container workloads on Windows, running the pre-release build alongside Docker Desktop costs nothing and gives WSL Container a head start before it becomes the default choice. The post I built a Linux container on Windows 11 without Docker Desktop, and Docker users should pay attention appeared first on Windows Latest

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Microsoft expected to lay off thousands in what has become an annual July restructuring

By ckasprzak | TkOut | July 3, 2026 | Microsoft, Software
The Hot Take: Software development world is condensing fast with Ai....

Microsoft is expected to announce another round of layoffs soon. Less than 2.5% of the company's workforce will be affected, according to sources that spoke with Business Insider. Due Microsoft's size, even that small percentage means thousands of people will be affected.An SEC filing from June 30, 2025 showed Microsoft had about 228,000 employees. That figure has fluctuated since then, but it gives a gauge of the size of Microsoft's full-time workforce.Division cuts & AI infrastructureThis round of layoffs will affect thousands of roles across sales, consulting, and within the Xbox division. Microsoft is expected to announce the layoffs next week, though plans are subject to change.July layoffs have become commonplace for Microsoft because the company's fiscal year starts on July 1. Over 9,000 layoffs were made by Microsoft last July. Microsoft also lays off workers during other times of the year, such as the 6,000 layoffs made in May 2025.Microsoft is one of many tech giants looking to reduce head count and lower expenses in certain areas. Increased AI spending and the rise of AI has affected jobs at several levels.Voluntary retirements lowered the impactThis July will reportedly have fewer layoffs because several employees took voluntary retirement. Microsoft offered buyouts to employees level 67 and below in the United States who had 70 or more combined years of service and years of age (for example, someone who was 50 years old who had worked for Microsoft for 20 years).Roughly 9,000 Microsoft employees were eligible for that buyout and around one third of those eligible took the buyout, according to Business Insider.Xbox restructuringLayoffs have been expected, and not simply because they've become an annual occurrence. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma is overseeing a restructuring of Xbox, much of which will occur within a 100-day reset.As is the case with all layoff-related stories, I understand the business decisions that lead to layoffs but feel bad for the employees affected.Join us on Reddit at r/WindowsCentral to share your insights and discuss our latest news, reviews, and more.

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Microsoft denies WSL 3 exists, reveals Windows 11’s WSL Containers ship next week

By ckasprzak | TkOut | June 30, 2026 | Microsoft Windows, Software
The Hot Take: Slowly Windows becoming more and more Linux.

Microsoft has shot down the idea that WSL 3 is on the way. The articles that have been calling it WSL 3 mixed up a different feature, WSL Containers, which the company showed at Build 2026 and is now days away from shipping. The correction came straight from the team that builds Windows Subsystem for Linux. TL; DR: WSL 3 does not exist. WSL Containers does, and it shows up in less than a week. Microsoft has officially denied that WSL 3 exists. Craig Loewen, the Product Manager at Microsoft responsible for the Windows Subsystem for Linux, posted on X to clear up: “As a PSA, there is no such thing as WSL 3! I’ve seen some articles talking about it, and it’s not currently a thing.” Loewen was addressing a wave of articles that misidentified a different announcement. The confusion started from Microsoft Build 2026, where the company announced WSL Containers, a new built-in feature that lets you create, run, and interact with Linux containers directly on Windows without third-party tools like Docker Desktop. Popular publications reported this as WSL 3, partly because the abbreviation WSLc was floating around. According to Loewen, WSL Containers is not a versioned successor to WSL 2. It is a new capability built on top of the existing WSL infrastructure. He also confirmed it will be available in just a week or so from his post on June 23, 2026. What is WSL, and what are WSL Containers If you are not a developer, here’s a quick primer. WSL stands for Windows Subsystem for Linux, and it is a feature built into Windows that lets you run Linux environments directly inside Windows, without the need to dual-boot into a separate OS or set up a full VM. However, a container is a lightweight, isolated environment that packages an application along with everything it needs to run, including dependencies, libraries, and configuration. Unlike a VM, a container does not simulate an entire operating system. It shares the host OS kernel but keeps its own file system and process space. The advantage is that containers are faster to start, easier to share, and portable across machines. WSL Containers brings this container functionality directly into WSL itself. WSL Containers vs WSL 1 and WSL 2: what is different WSL Containers is not a version number. It is a new layer of capability on top of WSL’s existing virtual machine infrastructure. WSL 1 launched in August 2016 as a translation layer that converted Linux system calls into Windows ones. There wasn’t any real Linux kernel, so containers were a non-starter. WSL 2 arrived in preview in May 2019 with a full Linux kernel running inside a lightweight managed VM, which made Docker Desktop possible. WSL 1 (2016) WSL 2 (2019) WSL Containers (2026) Primary purpose Run Linux command-line tools on Windows Run a full Linux OS inside Windows Run isolated Linux containers natively on Windows Engine Translation layer, no real Linux kernel Real Linux kernel in a lightweight Hyper-V VM Dedicated Hyper-V engine built for OCI containers Container support No Yes, but needs Docker Desktop Yes, natively via wslc.exe Control surface Windows Command Prompt or Linux terminal Linux terminal inside a distro (e.g., Ubuntu) wslc CLI from any Windows terminal So, what problem is WSL Containers solving? In case you didn’t know it already, developers who wanted Linux containers on Windows used Docker Desktop, which uses WSL 2 as its backend on Windows 11. Docker Desktop works well, but it comes with per-seat licensing costs for larger teams and needs a complex setup that IT administrators in enterprise environments have to manage separately. WSL Containers removes the need for Docker Containers can now be built, run, and deployed directly from Windows using wslc.exe, without installing Docker Desktop or any other third-party tool. The command syntax closely mirrors Docker, so developers do not face a steep relearning curve. WSL Containers also supports GPU passthrough via the Container Device Interface, which means you can run GPU-accelerated workloads like CUDA-based machine learning pipelines inside a Linux container on your Windows GPU drivers. For enterprise IT administrators, the feature integrates into the existing Windows management infrastructure. Policy-based enablement through Group Policy or MDM controls, which containers can run and where images can be sourced from. Administrators can see running containers through standard Windows auditing tools, which is something Docker Desktop did not offer natively. Microsoft announced WSL Containers at Build 2026 At Build 2026 on June 2, Microsoft positioned WSL Containers as a core part of its developer-optimized Windows 11 story. The official announcement, published by Executive Vice President Pavan Davuluri, described it as “a built-in way to create, run and interact with Linux containers on Windows.” https://www.windowslatest.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/WSL-containers.mp4 WSL Containers has two components: The first is the exe CLI, which lets developers build, run, and deploy Linux containers directly from the command line, out of the box. The second is the WSL Container API, which allows Windows application developers to use Linux containers programmatically as part of app logic, covering scenarios like running local AI workloads, container-based testing pipelines, and Linux-based data processing from within native Windows apps. Build 2026 also had a few other Linux tools for Windows 11. Coreutils for Windows is now generally available, bringing over 75 familiar Linux command-line utilities like ls, grep, cp, and mv natively to Windows without WSL or a VM. Built on the open-source uutils project in Rust, these commands run directly on Windows, which means scripts that use them work without modification. The Intelligent Terminal, an experimental feature that brings context-aware AI assistance directly into the terminal, was also previewed at the same event. Why Microsoft keeps investing in Linux on Windows Microsoft’s investments in WSL and Linux tooling are not altruistic. The company knows that if Windows becomes the easiest place to run Linux workloads, developers have fewer reasons to switch to macOS or a native Linux setup. We wrote about this when Microsoft outlined plans to upgrade WSL with faster file access, better networking, and easier setup. Modern software development is overwhelmingly Linux-first. Build pipelines run on Linux. Cloud infrastructure runs on Linux. AI frameworks like PyTorch, TensorFlow, llama.cpp, and Ollama are built and optimized for Linux environments. Developers working on Windows have historically had to either fight their tools or maintain a separate Linux environment alongside their Windows machine. With WSL 2 handling Linux kernel compatibility and WSL Containers eliminating the need for Docker Desktop, Microsoft is trying to remove every reason a developer might have to reach for a different platform. Coreutils on top of that means even the command-line muscle memory that belongs to macOS and Linux now works on Windows out of the box. It’s good news for developers. Each iteration of WSL has consistently improved the experience. I’m also a fan of how WSL Containers arrive as a routine WSL update, available to every Windows 11 user without a major OS upgrade. The post Microsoft denies WSL 3 exists, reveals Windows 11’s WSL Containers ship next week appeared first on Windows Latest

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Windows 11 26H2 is just 174KB, which is 0.003 % of 24H2’s size. Here’s how

By ckasprzak | TkOut | June 26, 2026 | Microsoft Windows, Software
The Hot Take: Impressive size reduction.

The “big” Windows 11 update for the year 2026, aka Windows 11 26H2, is arriving this fall as a mere 174KB enablement package for anyone already running Windows 11 24H2 or 25H2. For context, upgrading from 23H2 to 26H2 requires close to 6.5GB (not a typo). Windows 11 update, depending on which version you are on, can weigh either 174 kilobytes or roughly 6.5 gigabytes. The reason is the shared servicing branch model. With Microsoft now force-installing Windows 11 25H2 on all eligible Home and Pro PCs ahead of the 26H2 launch, we’ll tell you why going from 25H2 to 26H2 is easier than ever. Windows 11 26H2 is a 174KB enablement package for only devices on 24H2 and 25H2 Why Windows 11 24H2 was such a big upgrade Windows 11 24H2, released in October 2024, was a full operating system replacement. Microsoft calls this an “OS swap.” When you upgrade from a version on a different source code branch, Windows pulls down a completely new OS image, installs it on top of the existing system, migrates your settings and data, and boots into it. It is the same process Windows has used for decades.   The package for that kind of upgrade consists of two major components. There is the base 24H2 image, which is 5.3GB, and the final cumulative update payload that brings it up to the 25H2 level, which adds another 887MB. If you were coming from Windows 11 23H2, the complete upgrade process meant downloading close to 6.5GB of data, followed by the familiar sequence of spinning progress rings and multiple restarts. The 23H2 to 24H2 jump was large for a specific reason: these two versions do not share the same source code branch. Windows 11 23H2 came from the 22H2/23H2 branch, while 24H2 introduced an entirely new branch. Every time Microsoft creates a new branch, upgrading between them requires a full OS swap, no matter how similar the two versions look. Graphical representation of the source code branches for Windows 11. Source: Microsoft What the Windows shared servicing branch really means Starting with Windows 10 version 1909, Microsoft began experimenting with something different. Instead of forking a new branch for each annual release, the company kept the same source code and quietly staged the next version’s features through regular monthly Patch Tuesday updates, in a disabled state. When the time came to release the new version, a small “enablement package” simply flipped a switch to turn those features on. Source: Microsoft Windows 11 24H2, 25H2, and 26H2 all share the same source code branch, codenamed Germanium internally. Every month, when your PC installs a Patch Tuesday update, it is receiving security patches as well as the dormant code for the next version of Windows. By the time Microsoft officially releases 26H2, every device running 24H2 or 25H2 will already have the feature code sitting on it, disabled, and waiting. Because all three versions share the same source code, the same security fixes, and the same regression testing baseline, the only differences between 24H2, 25H2, and 26H2 is which features have been switched on, with newer features reserved for the newer version. Why 26H2 is just 174KB and how the enablement package works Once your device is on 24H2 or 25H2 and has received recent cumulative updates, the 26H2 feature code is already present. The upgrade to 26H2 works like this: the disabled feature flags on your device are changed to enabled, the device restarts, the new features become active, and the build number moves from 26200 to 26300. The package responsible for all of that weighs 174KB. The four stages of an update from one version to another. Source: Microsoft Even the screenshots I add to these articles are larger! The entire process takes only minutes and requires one restart, compared to the extended installation sequence of a traditional feature update. Microsoft confirmed these numbers in a June 2026 whitepaper on the shared servicing model. For the 25H2 upgrade as a reference point, the enablement package was 174KB against a full 25H2 feature update of close to 6.5GB, which is about three-thousandths of one percent of the full package size. The 26H2 enablement package follows the same pattern and the same figure. For organizations managing hundreds or thousands of PCs, the benefit is far more than the download size. They can considerably reduce compatibility testing to only the newly enabled features instead of testing the entire application and hardware stack, because technically, the OS code has not changed. Microsoft’s guidance is that IT teams can treat a 24H2-to-26H2 upgrade the same way they would treat a monthly quality update. Why upgrading from 23H2 still requires the full 6.5GB download Not every Windows 11 version qualifies for the enablement package, though. Windows 11 23H2 is on the 22H2/23H2 branch, which is a completely separate code repository from the 24H2/25H2/26H2 branch. There is no shared foundation, so there is no staged code to activate. A device on 23H2 still needs the traditional OS swap to reach 26H2. How to update from one version of Windows to another depends on their branches. Source: Microsoft Windows 11 23H2 already reached end-of-life for Home and Pro users in November 2025, so most devices that were on it have already been moved up, either to 24H2 or directly to 25H2. If your PC is somehow still on 23H2, the upgrade to 26H2 will come as a full feature update, and not an enablement package. As expected, Windows 11 21H2 and 22H2 are on their own earlier branches and have been out of support for some time. Devices that lingered on those versions would have needed a full OS swap to reach any version in the current 24H2/25H2/26H2 branch. What about Windows 11 26H1, and why is it different? You may have seen news about Windows 11 26H1 and wondered where it fits. The short answer is that it does not apply to your existing PC. Windows 11 26H1 is exclusively for devices with next-generation silicon, specifically the Snapdragon X2 and potentially upcoming ARM-based chips. It is built on a completely different platform branch called Bromine, not Germanium. Source: Lenovo Because 26H1 and 26H2 are on different internal platforms, devices running 26H1 cannot upgrade to 26H2. Microsoft has confirmed that those devices will follow a separate path to a future Windows release. It is a version number that is higher than 26H2 on paper but represents a different OS lineage. For the vast majority of users on Intel and AMD hardware, 26H1 holds no relevance. The update you will see this fall is 26H2, and it will be a 174KB enablement package if you are already on 24H2 or 25H2. If you want a hands-on look at what 26H1 is like in practice, we covered it separately. .NET Framework 3.5 is unavailable in Windows 11 26H1 When to expect Windows 11 26H2 and how to get it Microsoft has confirmed Windows 11 26H2 for a fall 2026 release with no changes to hardware requirements. Any device running 24H2 or 25H2 today is already eligible. Based on previous release patterns, October is the most likely target, though Microsoft has not confirmed a specific date. When it arrives, devices on 24H2 and 25H2 will receive the update through Windows Update automatically over time, or you can check manually by going to Settings > Windows Update > Check for updates. The install will take a few minutes and one restart. The support lifecycle will reset as well, with 24 months for Home and Pro editions and 36 months for Enterprise and Education editions from the general availability date. The enablement package also explains why Microsoft is aggressively pushing 25H2 to all eligible consumer PCs now, ahead of the 26H2 launch. Getting every device onto the shared branch means that when 26H2 arrives, the update path for the largest possible set of users is the 174KB package, and not 6.5GB. The post Windows 11 26H2 is just 174KB, which is 0.003 % of 24H2’s size. Here’s how appeared first on Windows Latest

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Microsoft is killing the Microsoft account lock-in across products, Windows 11 may be next

By ckasprzak | TkOut | June 20, 2026 | Microsoft Windows, Software
The Hot Take: I guess OK? Is it going to be a google authenticated Microsoft account though?

Microsoft is quietly loosening its grip on the Microsoft account (MSA) requirement. Edge is getting a new option to sign in with a Google account, and we already know that internal teams in the company are working to bring back local account in Windows 11. This may be the first time in 10 years that Microsoft is getting a change of heart when it comes to forcing us to sign in with MSA. For years, Microsoft pushed MSA hard. You needed one to set up Windows 11, to get the most out of Bing, to claim Rewards points, and to sync anything in Edge. The company even paid people $1 million to use Bing, a promotion that only worked if you had a Microsoft account, since Bing Rewards cannot be redeemed without one. But something has changed. Microsoft is quietly stepping back from that hard stance, and the most visible sign of it is coming to Edge. Microsoft Edge will let you sign in with a Google account Microsoft has added a new entry to the Microsoft 365 Roadmap (Roadmap ID: 565860), confirming that Edge users will be able to sign in to the browser using a Google account. The feature is currently in development and is slated to begin rolling out in July 2026. It will be available on both Windows and macOS. New Google sign in option in Microsoft Edge We got early access to a build of Edge where the feature is already live, and in the profile menu, below the existing “Sign in to sync” button, there is now a new “Or sign in with” section with a Google button. Clicking it opens Google’s standard sign-in page, which shows the Edge logo and asks you to sign in with your Google account to continue to Microsoft Edge. Once signed in, the Edge profile card shows your Gmail address, with sync turned on. Your Google account becomes the profile identity, no Microsoft account required. Signed into Microsoft Edge with a Google account Note that the UI or behaviours may change as we still have a few more weeks since this rolls out to general public. Of course, this doesn’t mean that Microsoft account is being removed, but the Google account login is an addition, not a replacement. Microsoft says: “Users can now sign in to Microsoft Edge using a Google account in addition to the Microsoft account from the profile menu and Edge sign-in screen.” Enterprise administrators can control whether the feature is available using the NonMicrosoftAccountSignInEnabled policy. It’s clear that Microsoft is targeting Chrome users. If your passwords, bookmarks, and browsing history are all linked to a Google account, signing into Edge with that same Google account means a far lower barrier to switching. You get all the Microsoft ecosystem perks, vertical tabs, and immersive reader, both of which Google already copied, and my favourite feature, AI Tab Organizer, which Apple copied to Safari. Anyway, Edge is a good browser, and you’ll get to use it without needing a separate Microsoft account just to get started. Edge already lets you bring your Google data over Edge has offered Google data import options for quite a while. As we reported back in 2022, Microsoft built a feature that continuously pulls bookmarks and passwords from Chrome into Edge, so switching browsers does not mean losing your saved data. More recently, Edge has also offered a “Your Google data and services, now in Edge” prompt during setup, allowing users to import Gmail, Google Drive, YouTube, and more directly into the browser without ever touching Chrome again. Microsoft Edge shows option to import data from Google The upcoming Google account sign-in takes that a step further. Instead of just importing Chrome data, users can now anchor their Edge profile to a Google account, making the transition even more seamless for the hundreds of millions of Chrome users. You could already create a Microsoft account with a Gmail address There is a lesser-known detail that I feel is worth saying here. Microsoft’s account sign-in page already accepts Gmail addresses. If you type a Gmail ID into the Microsoft account sign-in field and follow the prompts, Microsoft creates a Microsoft account associated with that Gmail address. A Google account with a gmail.com domain becomes a Microsoft account! Microsoft account with gmail ID So, in a way, Microsoft has been quietly lowering the Gmail barrier for some time. The only issue was that people did not know about it, or they did not want to create an account of any kind. The upcoming Edge Google sign-in option neatly sidesteps both problems. Microsoft is also rethinking the forced MSA sign-in during Windows 11 setup What’s interesting is that Edge not being strict about a Microsoft account is part of a broader pattern. As we reported three months ago in March 2026, Microsoft is considering dropping the forced Microsoft account sign-in requirement during Windows 11 setup (OOBE). Scott Hanselman says developers are working to remove requirement to login to MSA Right now, setting up a fresh Windows 11 PC without a Microsoft account is almost impossible. Forced to sign in during Windows 11 setup Windows 11 OOBE had turned into an ad-cluttered slog, with Microsoft account prompts stacked on top of pitches for OneDrive and Copilot. Microsoft acknowledged that the setup needed to be faster and less intrusive. The move to loosen the MSA requirement fits squarely into that effort. Of course, frustration with the forced Microsoft account in OOBE is not new. Back in November 2025, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney and Elon Musk both publicly pushed Microsoft to remove the MSA requirement from Windows 11. Fortunately for us, feedback has evidently made its way internally. The irony of Microsoft opening the door for Google Bing just crossed 1 billion monthly active users for the first time, as confirmed by CEO Satya Nadella during Microsoft’s Q3 earnings call. With Bing finally gaining footing, it is interesting to see Microsoft now enabling Google account sign-in in the same browser that had long been its vehicle for pushing people toward Microsoft services. Microsoft has been faking Google’s homepage on Bing, paid users to switch to Bing through Microsoft Rewards, and has been leaning on every Windows integration possible to keep users in the Microsoft ecosystem. And yet here we are, with Microsoft officially inviting Google account users into Edge. The Edge team probably views this less as a concession and more as a pragmatic move to get Chrome users into Edge first, let them discover the Microsoft ecosystem at their own pace. Meanwhile, Microsoft is also giving users the option to remove Bing from Windows 11 Search, something we have been asking for years, and the feature is now hidden in latest Insider build. Credit: Phantomofearth on X Between loosening Bing in Search, softening the OOBE MSA requirement, and now allowing Google account sign-in in Edge, the software giant is showing a clear shift away from the aggressive lock-in tactics that defined the past few years of Windows, and this gives me hope in the future of the OS. That said, whether this shift holds or whether it is a calculated goodwill play before the next round of Copilot integrations remains to be seen. For now, Chrome users who have resisted Edge because of the Microsoft account wall will have one less reason to say no, and that is probably what Microsoft is counting on. The post Microsoft is killing the Microsoft account lock-in across products, Windows 11 may be next appeared first on Windows Latest

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