The one I bought came with Linux, but some weird distro I never heard of and I doubt anybody would really want to use. So I install a mainstream distro on it,

The one I bought came with Linux, but some weird distro I never heard of and I doubt anybody would really want to use. So I install a mainstream distro on it, no big deal, but then the limitations of the very small screen size become apparent when KDE/GNOME fail to fit basic things like settings GUIs onto the screen. With a tiling window manager it became perfect for me. But I think most general computer users would be utterly alienated with that Linux experience. For the windows experience to also be shitty doubtlessly hurt the product line as well, but I don't think that shitty windows experience was displacing a polished linux experience. I think ASUS was basically between a rock and a hard place.