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Is Microsoft still preventing OEMs from installing Linux? Dell sells one, and I see a couple available on Amazon (not counting Chromebooks). I've assumed that y

Is Microsoft still preventing OEMs from installing Linux? Dell sells one, and I see a couple available on Amazon (not counting Chromebooks). I've assumed that you can't buy them at in-person stores because the demand is just way too low and the shops don't want people coming in to complain that something doesn't work the way they expected.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
The general scheme is that they give you a "volume discount" where "volume" is defined as however many computers you're selling, so if you put Linux on more of them then your Windows licensing volume goes down and you lose the discount for all computers. They used to do this in a way that you basically couldn't sell any computers with Linux, but that got them in trouble, so now you can get Linux from the Dell website if you go out and specifically look for it but anybody who makes it a prominent offering or pays for shelf space at Best Buy would still get punished. You can see the evidence of this because there are still Linux-specific OEMs who get out of it by not doing business with Microsoft at all (and it's Google rather than Dell paying for the retail shelf space, because they don't sell Windows machines), whereas you would expect the major OEMs would eat their lunch if there wasn't something stopping them.
- lolinder 2y ago
  The volume discount theory doesn't really make sense, unless both of these things is true: 1) There's enough demand for prebuilt Linux machines to meaningfully reduce your Windows sales such that you fall into a different discount bracket, and 2) A sufficient percentage of those (apparently significant number of) people who want a Linux box will fall back on Windows rather than looking for another OEM. I'm not buying it. My anecdotal experience suggests that the Venn diagram of "wants an OEM machine" and "wants Linux" has a vanishingly small intersection—the tiny fraction of the population who wants to use Linux are overwhelmingly DIYers when it comes to computers and have opinions about what kind of hardware they use. They might pay someone to build a machine for them, but they're not going to grab one off the shelf. Obviously there are exceptions, but the key question is if those exceptions are sufficient to account for a reduction in a volume discount that would lead to this kind of behavior from OEMs. I'm just not seeing it: far more likely than there being enough in that intersection to pose a threat to volume discounts is that there are simply so few of them that it's not even worth trying. Your anecdote at the end doesn't preclude this, because it makes sense that some OEMs would choose to specialize in a very small niche. And the existence of these specialty OEMs reduces the odds of point 2 holding true—the small number of people who really want this have a place to go already, so the large OEMs would likely lose many of these customers anyway!
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    > There's enough demand for prebuilt Linux machines to meaningfully reduce your Windows sales such that you fall into a different discount bracket That's the easy one to satisfy when Microsoft is tailoring your discount bracket to be just below your predicted total sales numbers. > A sufficient percentage of those (apparently significant number of) people who want a Linux box will fall back on Windows rather than looking for another OEM. Millions of people need a machine to do basic web and email, so they go to Best Buy or similar and buy whatever is on the shelf. They have only weak preferences in either direction and then get Windows by default. Look at what happened when Google started paying for a tiny bit of shelf space for Chromebooks. Suddenly they're a percentage of the market proportional to how much shelf space they bought. If people actually had a preference for Windows, shouldn't they have rejected those instead of grabbing them off the shelves in proportion to how many of the machines in stock were Chromebooks?
    - lolinder 2y ago
      > That's the easy one to satisfy when Microsoft is tailoring your discount bracket to be just below your predicted total sales numbers. This is rank speculation, and I don't see any reason to believe that Microsoft would need to do this in order to see what we're seeing in the market. Low demand is a much simpler explanation that does suffice (unless you have evidence that it does not suffice?). > They have only weak preferences in either direction and then get Windows by default. They have a strong preference for a machine that just does what it's supposed to do without maintenance. Aside from Chromebooks, Linux is not that at the moment. Best Buy in turn has a strong preference for people not returning their machines angrily. Chromebooks are an exception because they're nominally Linux but the interface presented to users is basically just Chrome. They actually are a general consumer device, which is not what OP is asking for.
      - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        > This is rank speculation It's the thing that came out in the anti-trust trial. > Low demand is a much simpler explanation that does suffice If demand is low then why does Linux market share keep growing despite the low level of promotion or retail availability? > They have a strong preference for a machine that just does what it's supposed to do without maintenance. Aside from Chromebooks, Linux is not that at the moment. ChromeOS is just a Linux distribution (Debian derivative?) with a UI that emphasizes Chrome. You can run some rolling release distribution if you want to risk breakage in exchange for bleeding edge versions of packages, but there are plenty of boring LTS distributions that require less maintenance than Windows does.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  > Dell website if you go out and specifically look for it but anybody who makes it a prominent offering or pays for shelf space at Best Buy would still get punished. You think Microsoft is going to “punish” its largest OEM because it sells 2% of its computers with Linux? Also do you think Linux users are going to Best Buy looking for computers? Even if they did, do you think the average Best Buy employee is going to know how to sell Linux or that Best Buy is going to go through the trouble of training them? Apple couldn’t get resellers to learn Macs well enough to sell them and that was there motivation to open dedicated Apple Stores and stores within a store.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago

The general scheme is that they give you a "volume discount" where "volume" is defined as however many computers you're selling, so if you put Linux on more of them then your Windows licensing volume goes down and you lose the discount for all computers. They used to do this in a way that you basically couldn't sell any computers with Linux, but that got them in trouble, so now you can get Linux from the Dell website if you go out and specifically look for it but anybody who makes it a prominent offering or pays for shelf space at Best Buy would still get punished. You can see the evidence of this because there are still Linux-specific OEMs who get out of it by not doing business with Microsoft at all (and it's Google rather than Dell paying for the retail shelf space, because they don't sell Windows machines), whereas you would expect the major OEMs would eat their lunch if there wasn't something stopping them.

lolinder 2y ago
The volume discount theory doesn't really make sense, unless both of these things is true: 1) There's enough demand for prebuilt Linux machines to meaningfully reduce your Windows sales such that you fall into a different discount bracket, and 2) A sufficient percentage of those (apparently significant number of) people who want a Linux box will fall back on Windows rather than looking for another OEM. I'm not buying it. My anecdotal experience suggests that the Venn diagram of "wants an OEM machine" and "wants Linux" has a vanishingly small intersection—the tiny fraction of the population who wants to use Linux are overwhelmingly DIYers when it comes to computers and have opinions about what kind of hardware they use. They might pay someone to build a machine for them, but they're not going to grab one off the shelf. Obviously there are exceptions, but the key question is if those exceptions are sufficient to account for a reduction in a volume discount that would lead to this kind of behavior from OEMs. I'm just not seeing it: far more likely than there being enough in that intersection to pose a threat to volume discounts is that there are simply so few of them that it's not even worth trying. Your anecdote at the end doesn't preclude this, because it makes sense that some OEMs would choose to specialize in a very small niche. And the existence of these specialty OEMs reduces the odds of point 2 holding true—the small number of people who really want this have a place to go already, so the large OEMs would likely lose many of these customers anyway!
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  > There's enough demand for prebuilt Linux machines to meaningfully reduce your Windows sales such that you fall into a different discount bracket That's the easy one to satisfy when Microsoft is tailoring your discount bracket to be just below your predicted total sales numbers. > A sufficient percentage of those (apparently significant number of) people who want a Linux box will fall back on Windows rather than looking for another OEM. Millions of people need a machine to do basic web and email, so they go to Best Buy or similar and buy whatever is on the shelf. They have only weak preferences in either direction and then get Windows by default. Look at what happened when Google started paying for a tiny bit of shelf space for Chromebooks. Suddenly they're a percentage of the market proportional to how much shelf space they bought. If people actually had a preference for Windows, shouldn't they have rejected those instead of grabbing them off the shelves in proportion to how many of the machines in stock were Chromebooks?
  - lolinder 2y ago
    > That's the easy one to satisfy when Microsoft is tailoring your discount bracket to be just below your predicted total sales numbers. This is rank speculation, and I don't see any reason to believe that Microsoft would need to do this in order to see what we're seeing in the market. Low demand is a much simpler explanation that does suffice (unless you have evidence that it does not suffice?). > They have only weak preferences in either direction and then get Windows by default. They have a strong preference for a machine that just does what it's supposed to do without maintenance. Aside from Chromebooks, Linux is not that at the moment. Best Buy in turn has a strong preference for people not returning their machines angrily. Chromebooks are an exception because they're nominally Linux but the interface presented to users is basically just Chrome. They actually are a general consumer device, which is not what OP is asking for.
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      > This is rank speculation It's the thing that came out in the anti-trust trial. > Low demand is a much simpler explanation that does suffice If demand is low then why does Linux market share keep growing despite the low level of promotion or retail availability? > They have a strong preference for a machine that just does what it's supposed to do without maintenance. Aside from Chromebooks, Linux is not that at the moment. ChromeOS is just a Linux distribution (Debian derivative?) with a UI that emphasizes Chrome. You can run some rolling release distribution if you want to risk breakage in exchange for bleeding edge versions of packages, but there are plenty of boring LTS distributions that require less maintenance than Windows does.
scarface_74 2y ago
> Dell website if you go out and specifically look for it but anybody who makes it a prominent offering or pays for shelf space at Best Buy would still get punished. You think Microsoft is going to “punish” its largest OEM because it sells 2% of its computers with Linux? Also do you think Linux users are going to Best Buy looking for computers? Even if they did, do you think the average Best Buy employee is going to know how to sell Linux or that Best Buy is going to go through the trouble of training them? Apple couldn’t get resellers to learn Macs well enough to sell them and that was there motivation to open dedicated Apple Stores and stores within a store.