Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 22nd Jan 2013 21:28 UTC, submitted by lemur2
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Member since:
2007-08-22
When users by a PC, it comes with a warranty for the hardware and the software. Of course, the "warranty" for the software consists of little more than the OEM reformating the harddrive for you, but users don't care, as long as they don't have to do it, aka as long as somebody fixes it for them. So, no average user is going to throw away Windows and install Linux, and lose the software warranty and have to support themselves from that moment on.
OEMs on the other hand won't preinstall Linux because they are afraid of upgrade breakages every six months (courtesy of X.org and PulseAudio).
I'm pretty sure that my HP Laptop that came with SuSE Linux has a full hardware+software warranty on it. Mind you the software side might only cover SuSE's SLED that came on it, but it's still nonetheless a warranty for the software too.
No, I wouldn't expect them to support the Kubuntu install I put on there - especially since it's not an LTS version. Nor would I expect them to support Linux on my wife's HP laptop when it gets converted over (after she gets an upgrade); or for Dell to support my 2003 era D600 with Gentoo Linux (though it was out of warranty before I put Gentoo on there).
I would also say that Windows users don't tend to think about warranty's on their software either, though they do expect support for the general warranty period of the system from when they first received it.
All-in-all, I think you comment is rather off-topic and rather invalid or at least moot.