> the vast majority of laptops are only sold with a specific proprietary operating system: Microsoft Windows. The vendors do not remove the Windows license, and you must pay the entire price, even if you do not want to use this system. This is unfair and we want to change it! Consumers should be able to buy laptops without any specific operating system, and should not have to pay the license price if they don't want to.
How about this: don't buy a product that you don't want.
If you don't want Windows, then buy a product that doesn't come with Windows. Buy from System 76 or another vendor that sells the product that you want.
The (still limited but better) choice exists now in large part because of many years of activism[1][2][3][4] similar to that in the linked article as a consequence of Microsoft actively abusing their market position to make it hard to avoid paying for Windows.
> How about this: don't buy a product that you don't want.
How about laptop manufacturers stop making shady deals with Microsoft to force its OS on everyone?
It’s crazy how many passes these companies get. A huge number of them are still selling high-end laptops with Intel chips because they signed agreements that effectively prohibit them from offering AMD variants.
Let's stop pretending like any of this is acceptable.
Given the very wide selection of x86-64 platform PC workstation hardware which is capable of running linux just fine, limiting yourself to only a few vendors just because you don't want it to have win11 out of the box is really doing things the hard way just because.
It's like going car shopping and having a choice of a dozen brands and 8 or 10 different types of subcompact, compact, sports cars, compact SUVs, full size SUVs, minivans, EVs from each manufacturer. But no, you can only buy this specific model of Toyota Camry or or maybe 3 different models of Hyundai. Oh, you wanted something else? So sorry
I mean, I bought a random Intel N150 with 12GB RAM, 256GB SSD mini PC on Amazon to run Home Assistant on, it came with windows 11 out of the box and immediately got wiped. If I'd gone buying only the equivalent hardware that came with no OS or linux on it I would have paid hundreds more for the exact same thing.
A big store chain in italy (mediaworld/mediamarkt) sells laptops without license as well, of course with a lower price than the equivalent with windows license
And this is what's wrong with hardware like Apple: it's sold as a general computing device and is able to run alternative operating systems, however Apple doesn't want you doing that. And so they've set this expectation with consumers that: hey we're an ecosystem play, we don't care if you like our hardware and not our software because they're a package deal. Consumers not caring about this is dangerous in the long term, because if we continue down this path the open compute market is going to dwindle and become less and less accessible. You're not a business that has a license to buy open hardware? Sorry buddy, you have two choices: Apple and Microsoft. Good luck! - is where I, personally, don't want to see this continue moving.
How about this: don't buy a product that you don't want.
If you don't want Windows, then buy a product that doesn't come with Windows. Buy from System 76 or another vendor that sells the product that you want.