People talk about the Apple tax all the time but the Linux tax is real too. Of course there’s something to be said for putting your money where your mouth is and not giving Microsoft money for an OS you’ll never use.
Mainstream Windows laptops are often partly subsidized with a healthy dose of trialware installations and Linux laptops are too niche to reach economies of scale, but the good thing is that if you choose carefully it’s pretty trivial to install Linux over top of Windows these days.
I'm writing this on the cheapest laptop they had at the store, and Linux runs fine on it without any problems, using a standard installation without any tinkering needed. Everything "just works". In my experience that's more often true than not these days (or maybe I've just been very lucky).
Your mileage may vary with other models of course, but you certainly don't need a "Linux tax" to be a happy Linux user.
Mainstream Windows laptops are often partly subsidized with a healthy dose of trialware installations and Linux laptops are too niche to reach economies of scale, but the good thing is that if you choose carefully it’s pretty trivial to install Linux over top of Windows these days.