In what's good news for Microsoft, Windows 8 has become a more popular operating system than its much criticized Vista platform.

Although Windows 8 has taken awhile to gain traction, new data conducted by NetMarketShare.com has revealed the operating system was on about 5.1% of computers in June, compared to Vista's 4.6% share. The analytics firm used the desktop systems it tracks, which includes more than 40,000 business websites and 2 million personal ones such as blogs and profiles, as the basis of the report.

Windows 7 — the predecessor of Windows 8 — dominates the space with 44.8%, followed by Windows XP with 37.2%. The data also revealed Windows occupies 91.5% of the market and Mac takes up 7.2%. Linux trails with its 1.28% share.

Microsoft's web browser Internet Explorer 10 also experienced growth, thanks to automatic updates released by the company. Internet Explorer now makes up about 56.2% of the market share, followed by Firefox (19.2%), Chrome (17.2%) and Safari (5.6%).

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Browser maker Opera is joining the ranks of Google and Apple and embracing the WebKit rendering engine.

The company made the announcement in conjunction with news that Opera now reaches 300 million monthly users across its various browser products.

Web browsers rely on rendering engines to translate code into the visual text and display you see on your desktop, tablet or phone. Mozilla uses the Gecko rendering engine for Firefox, Microsoft uses Trident for Internet Explorer and Google and Apple use WebKit for Chrome and Safari. Historically, Opera has relied on its own Presto rendering engine for its browsers.

That's all going to change.

The company says it will move to WebKit slowly, first with its Opera Mobile browser and then, over time to its other products, including Opera for the desktop.

Opera will be showing off its first WebKit-based efforts at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona later this month with a preview of its next Android web browser.  Read more…

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