VA's original raison d'etre was that commodity systems manufacturers like Dell didn't make any effort to support Linux, and they often shipped machines that had

VA's original raison d'etre was that commodity systems manufacturers like Dell didn't make any effort to support Linux, and they often shipped machines that had hardware that wasn't workable under Linux. If you wanted a known-good supported hardware configuration and you didn't want to build it yourself, then VA was one of your few options. They also were pretty expensive machines, IIRC. There was a tide change around 2000-2001 where those manufacturers began caring about Linux, at least with regard to business customers. Dell's economies of scale and brand basically meant they could steamroll VA.