My understanding is it needs 95% consensus (way too high % imho), and has to prevail for 2 weeks for it to activate. Since we have more users now, can we make a difference by being millions of people versus miners with the BU opposition? or do we need to be actively mining our tiny Khashes (fine by me as I run it on a different computer than my day to day one).
The deployment threshold is 95% of the blocks in a retarget period must signal support. Since this has nothing to do with nodes or users, miners essentially have sole control of whether activation happens.
Are mining pools going to control this decision or are the majority family of users? I see good reasons for both, but don't see it as an either/or decision.
Ideally it should be both users and miners, but right now, only the miners get to decide as that is how the deployment mechanism works. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to gauge user support.
If together we can make an impact then I will turn mining on rather than the default.
Bitcoin Core 0.13.1 does not have any mining capability for the mainnet, that was entirely removed, not just disabled. You will have to use some other mining software in order to mine.
I suppose the best way to get segwit to activate soon would be to convince miners that segwit is good and convince them to either switch pools or convince the pool operators to mine segwit.
