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%).

Not surprising, Google topped the most popular search engine list with 82.7% of market share, followed by Yahoo (8.6%), Bing (5.9%) and Baidu (1.0%).