With Dell it's mostly a marketing exercise since they don't really write any of the software or drivers, they're just packaging the products (hardware and softw

With Dell it's mostly a marketing exercise since they don't really write any of the software or drivers, they're just packaging the products (hardware and software) that others produce. They are no different than most of the other major PC manufacturers in this regard. (some of the smaller specialty Linux PC companies do go at least a bit further than this) You can get Linux running on the vast majority of PC (desktop and laptop) models. There's value in this sort of bundle for people who want to buy a Linux machine with components known to have driver support and/or don't want to be bothered with installing and configuring it themselves.