My best guess: Putting Linux on subsidized hardware makes for affordable compute for large labs. Example [here](https://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3

My best guess: Putting Linux on subsidized hardware makes for affordable compute for large labs. Example [here](https://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercomputer.html https://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercomput...).