That seems to be a minor side-effect at best. This is generally more predatory, and closer to the windows 10 model i.e., a paid operating system that is user-ho

That seems to be a minor side-effect at best. This is generally more predatory, and closer to the windows 10 model i.e., a paid operating system that is user-hostile, and users generally don't have a way to opt out of the cost since OEMs won't really sell a machine without an OS or with linux. The $40 is still going to be passed on to the end-user here while nothing really changes.