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@lucky: I believe we are all trying to make Linux and the open-source platform better.
I do not believe that providing a choice for the operating system is a burden for computer manufacturers.

Is there a market for computers that do not come with pre-installed Windows? I do not have figures and I believe you do not have either. The current status for Linux users in the European market is you end up being forced to buy a computer with pre-installed Windows, format it and install Linux. My estimate is that there is enough market in the competitive computer market that a manufacturer would be in a position to differentiate their products if they have the option for no Windows.

I do not know what is your involvement in the open-source community; in the forums that I participate in and the users that I talk to, I see demand for non-Windows computers.

Regarding the last sentence in your last reply, I can only say that I am surprised that you end up expressing yourself in that way.

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Computers are commodity items. OEMs sell according to a mass market model rather than a custom model. That model assumes so close to 100% of customers expect Windows that it’ll prove easier to deal with odd-ball orders as-needed and ad hoc. That’s especially true with respect to laptops, since the OEMs farm out this business to contractors. Some OEMs have specific models they’ll offer with alternative configurations, including Linux. But there model is to accommodate the rule rather than the exception.

Whether you like it or not, the mass market expects a computer to come pre-configured with only one particular operating system. Consumer demand is what drives OEMs to install Windows, not any of the stuff which sends you into histrionics. When given “free” options like Linux, the market still chooses to pay for a license to use Windows. Even worse for your position, piracy demonstrates the popularity of Windows. Rather than embrace a “free” operating system like Linux, pirates would rather risk getting infected versions from warez sites and are too often willing to go without system patches, etc. You can rant and rave all you want against Microsoft, but that doesn’t change the fact that when given the choices of free (beer/liberty/both/either/etc.), paying license fees, or warez, the “free” choice comes in last. Every freakin’ time.

If you want to change things, you’re going to have to convince the world that your “free” OS is better than what they demand. I don’t think your tactics of bashing MS like you do have proven very successful over the past decade. No matter how unpopular MS-the-corporation is, MS-Windows is the dominant OS for the desktop.

“Pedestrian hyperbole” is much more diplomatic than what I was really thinking (I’ve been trying to be nice even to people who I think represent the worst of the open source movement — the mindless, reflexive, incorrigible haters who drip venom and vitriol even when none is needed). I think I had you pegged correctly as the kind of person who’d go out of his way to bash Microsoft rather than concede that the OEMs mass-market their goods and that Linux or FreeDOS don’t have enough demand to amount to a profitable *mass* market for anyone. I also don’t expect an Emily Littella-like “never mind” concession from you. It’s still queer that you ranted and raved about pickles and everything else (see above about “venom and vitriol even when none is needed) but I’ll presume you can’t help yourself.

@ Simos re different options in different markets: The reason some OEMs offer alternatives to Windows in certain markets but not others is for the same reason McDonald’s has chicken burgers in India and kosher/no-cheese burgers in Israel. It works where there’s enough demand in the aggregate. There just hasn’t been enough demand in most markets. It’s not about what position Microsoft is in, it’s the position the OEMs are in. Their margins aren’t very high to start with. They make their decisions on the basis of the rule rather than the exception. As long as Linux remains a niche OS (particularly on desktop/laptop), there will be few, if any, models with Linux.

The OEMs don’t even build their own laptops. They contract/order them pre-configured for the mass market. That means nearly every unit comes with Windows pre-installed from the factory (not Dell factory, not HP factory, but from a factory that often builds for both of those companies). That’s how they’re sent to re-sellers, retailers, etc. That’s why you have to do more shopping around and either choose a model an OEM like Dell offers with an OS you want or find a retailer who installs what you want.

It’s the price of being different — you have to adjust to the market because it’s unlikely the market is going to conform to you. There’s not much you can do if it’s too much to adjust your own behavior to adjust to reality. You can order from another market (such as SE Asia) where models you actually want are available, order a custom unit directly from the OEM as you want it, buy from a niche re-seller who’ll customize units, buy a bulk mass-market model even if it comes with Windows and get a refund for an unused license, or just whine about how hard it is to live according to what you believe in. I find the latter the most common but the least respectable.

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will_in_wi, Joseph: Indeed, for volume licensing it looks like customers end up being charged by Microsoft twice. Thanks for the links.

Zac: It is great you are happy with your Latitude 2100/Ubuntu. Thanks for the testimonial and the tip about Ubuntu 9.04.

Joseph, lucky: The ‘burger’ analogy was not good. Not only the cheese can be avoided, the bread can also be replaced with a material based on rice. I did not like it, but then I tried only once.

The issue with the operating system is that if there is customer demand for computers with either FreeDOS or Ubuntu Linux, then the manufacturers should meet it. For a manufacturer such as Dell which offers extensive customisation, they are in a position to offer FreeDOS or perhaps Ubuntu Linux. And they do so for the Latitude 2100.

There is the case where high-end computers may not be well supported with Linux, thus making it difficult for the manufacturer to offer Linux as an option. As a customer, I would not mind buying a high-end laptop with FreeDOS, considering that some of the hardware might not work straight away when I put Linux. It would be the same thing that happens to many of us when we buy a high-end computer with Microsoft software and we end up installing Linux straight away. In this case, we would save on the license we did not use, which is good.

As I showed in the SE Asian market (see again the images in the blog post above), the retailer can sell you a computer with FreeDOS, or give you the option to add Windows. What makes European resellers unable to do what SE Asian resellers are able to offer to their customers?

Microsoft is in a position to tie up payment for their software with the use of a product key. That is, they can give away their software in pre-installed computers for free (for the manufacturers), and only get paid when the customer chooses to activate Windows with the product key. In this way, the customer will have the final choice which operating system to use. I would love to see this as an option for several operating systems.

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Ah, the beauty of competition.

“So why the long, pedestrian diatribe when my analogy is already apropos.” Ignoring your flame-words (i.e. “pedestrian diatribe”), because it’s not apropos; it conveniently ignores critical points in addition to being wrong. That’s what I was pointing out.

“If there were profits to be made, there would be a lot more laptops without Windows”
This is not strictly true; you again ignore salient components of a marketplace, particularly in the presence of a predatory monopoly.

“Case in point: netbooks. Linux had a head start. Demand for Windows units increased. Windows versions outsold Linux versions, and Linux versions had higher return rates because users expected a Windows-like and Windows-compatible experience”

Quite. What happened was:
a) Brining XP back from the dead in order to kill Linux as an option on the desktop
b) Price dumping toward the same end.
c) Working with OEMs to push users toward Windows and away from Linux with advertising (with the same OEMS)!

Of course, you again ignore the myriad of ways for monopolistic OSes to eliminate competition, e.g. broken DSDTs.

“As far as your hyperbole about anything Windows-related, it’s funny how many open source sites with a “works with any browser” button I’ve hit using IE8 that don’t (!).”
a) “Hyperbole”? Please stick to the facts without slinging mud.
b) The plural of “anecdote” isn’t “data”
c) Even were your allegations proven to be true, for your IE8-incompatible (which, should be noted, is i) extremely new and ii) comes after nigh on a decade of dreadfully incompatible IE iii) continues ActiveX and IE-only lockin techologies) “works with any browser” section to have any bearing on vendor lock-in on the web, you must first show that they have a significant impact on the web.

“You probably won’t agree with me about the wisdom of the market in such things, but it has gotten that one right.”
The free market is fantastic, but it requires a free market. The desktop OS market is categorically *not* free. Now, if browser, application, hardware, network, and document compatibility (to name a few major categories) were not an issue, it might have a chance, but decades of Microsoft monopoly have made the playing field unbelievably slanted.

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