Net Applications

Windows 8 is slowly carving out a slightly larger slice of the OS market.

The latest flavor of Windows captured 3.17 percent of all desktop OS traffic tracked by Net Applications in March. That was a small gain from the 2.67 percent share in February.

Since its official debut last October, Windows 8 has very gradually risen up the ranks, at least in Net Applications' Web traffic reports.

Starting with a 1.09 percent share in November, the OS carved out a 1.72 percent share in December. It then grabbed a 2.26 percent share in January, pushing it past Mac OS X 10.8 to take the fourth spot among all operating systems.

Windows 7 remained comfortably ahead of Windows XP as the top OS last month, though the respective shares of both barely nudged from their February numbers. Windows 7 wrested the top spot from XP last August, according to Net Applications.

The much-maligned Windows Vista stayed in third place with a 5 percent share, a drop from the previous month.

Assuming Windows 8 keeps growing and Vista keeps falling -- both at a consistent pace -- Microsoft's new OS should steal third place sometime this summer.

Overall, Windows' share of Net Applications' desktop OS traffic was a bit more than 91 percent, a number virtually unchanged over the past several months. The share held by Mac OS X dipped slightly to 6.94 percent, while Linux was a distant third with 1.17 percent.