It is good to see it but a bit ridiculous to see companies marking up the pricing just to install an OS which is pretty simple to do with almost any hardware.
That’s the whole point of it. You get excellent tested comparability and support. For Linux users like me it’s worth the money. I can have Linux and not worry about if my hardware is compatible with the default install.
You are paying for support and to make it easy.
But scale, as they sell more one assumes the markup will decrease.
Pretending to be a system integrator by buying proprietary Windows hardware and slapping Linux on it is a mug's game.
They were going to start building their own laptops at one point. I'm not sure what happened with that. Of course, nobody except Apple really builds their own hardware these days either (hence the term ODM).
It's an added context switch. It takes a small amount of time and the end user has the convenience of not needing to do it, the end user chooses to pay for that.
disclaimer: I've never touched a s76 machine.
I would never run an OS that was pre-installed as the install image can't be verified.
Honestly, I've only ever run the pre-installed OS on one machine from them (my gaming Thelio). I buy them for the support both after- and before-purchase. I.e. because they do great support and provide machines that actually support Linux.
I used to not have the option of buying Linux hardware, and it was terrible. I don't understand why anybody does that to themselves these days, and I sincerely hope we never go back to having to buy Windows hardware, slapping Linux on top of it, and hoping that enough devs had the _exact_ same hardware to minimize the glitches.
