The consumer market is Windows ecosystem.

Without the ecosystem who wants Windows? And what will it do for reputation of the vendor or Microsoft when people can't run their apps.

People are already buying non Apple ARM laptops. They are called Chromebooks. They can run Linux apps and Android apps. And thats more than most consumers would expect.

Chromebooks are basically the hardware equivalent of a SaaS product where the user is not the buyer. Schools are buying Chromebooks for students.

Most people I know have some kind of chromebook (next to MacBook for work). They bought them in stores.

Is this a US thing where your school buys you a laptop?

Many schools in the US provide their students with laptops and Chromebook is the overwhelming favorite. The student has to return the laptop at the end of the year. As an anecdote, I know of no one who bought a Chromebook for personal use. My friends, colleagues and acquaintances are buying Macs or Windows machines if they want a laptop, iPads or Android tablets if they just want a tablet.

In a way, Google's strategy of getting Chromebooks into schools may have backfired as they're largely seen as kids' computers.

> Is this a US thing where your school buys you a laptop?

It is a thing that is essentially an equivalent of an employer-provided work laptop, but for students and provided by their school.

I’ve never even seen a Chromebook in real life here in Australia. I’m sure they must exist but I’ve never heard of anyone using one.

They are in use by the millions in schools. I have one and I really like, can run android apps, chrome web browser, and in the crostini linux system I can run any apps, dev tools, web browsers, emacs, and it is native. I like it better than raw linux because of the built in android support.

I gave chromeos laptops to my family because they aren't trustworthy. Now they have reliable laptops and don't get virus infections or os problems.

Yeah ok interesting! Makes sense for the Linux parts - not sure I’d trust Google with my family’s data but that doesn’t mean they’re not useful.

That's a complicated story. No one really wants surveillance capitalism. I don't think google copies what I'm doing on my chromebook, but almost every website has google tracking. Chrome has google tracking. You can use non-chrome browsers on chrome os, they are all there via the linux subsystem. You can also run the android ones.

Linux is 10% of desktop/laptop share and even higher of laptop share, given that very few people use ChromeOS on desktops.

Just a quick Google search shows 3%.

My previous comment explains why you interpreted your Google search incorrectly. ChromeOS is Linux. https://www.gizmochina.com/2023/03/07/windows-losing-market-...

This also shows the power of marketing. ChromeOS is a subset of Linux -- it doesn't do anything you couldn't always have done with Ubuntu. But for years people said that normal people don't want Linux, it doesn't run their apps, they can't use it.

One company shows up with a marketing budget and it's got triple the market share and is now up to the level that Mac traditionally held when all of the things "nobody makes for Linux" because "nobody uses it" supported that.

We're also at the point where things like bank websites don't "officially" support Linux, but as a general rule they don't have any problems on it, and if they did have problems it would be a problem the bank has to deal with instead of a problem the customer has to deal with.