Indeed they could, but that’s not likely to happen. You can’t seem to fathom the idea someone would see Linux on their desktop or laptop computer and say, “I don’t want this.”

“I think consumers are smart enough to prefer doing it once only for GNU/Linux.”

“I don’t know any consumers will want to add huge labours to their purchases just to prop up M$’s monopoly.”

For better or worse, not everyone thinks like you do, nor does everyone have the same problems with Windows that you had.

“It is easier for them to use Free Software, a cooperative product of the world. Install it and forget it. No malware, no slowing down, no re-re-reboots.”

Same old outdated and inflated sales pitch.

“Why would they do otherwise?”

Because they don’t want to use the product you’re pushing.

I have seen the world. I was in Saudi Arabia in the 1980s. There were multi-story buildings selling audio cassettes with really bad labels. I can imagine there are places on Earth where such operations have been brought up to date technologically. It still takes time and effort by the consumer to take a PC to such a place and to fix it repeatedly. I think consumers are smart enough to prefer doing it once only for GNU/Linux.

This brings to mind a purchase I made in Saudi Arabia in those days. I have a few of them still as good as new all these years later… The particular one is a huge/heavy reel-to-reel tape recorder that can hold 2400 foot tapes. I recently dragged it from the last place I lived to here because it was occupying space. I was younger then and hefted it on my shoulder in the shop where I bought it, hiked up an over the pedestrian crossing of a major thoroughfare, got on a bus and brought it to our third-story apartment in Riyadh in the heat. Now it’s all I can do to shift it from one place to another. I guess we will sell it on the web if anyone wants to buy it… I have been out in the world. I don’t know any consumers will want to add huge labours to their purchases just to prop up M$’s monopoly. It is easier for them to use Free Software, a cooperative product of the world. Install it and forget it. No malware, no slowing down, no re-re-reboots. Why would they do otherwise?

Or, they could just take their newly-bought GNU/Linux PC home and let it run. That sounds easier to me. If it’s a FreeDOS PC, they could pay the installer to install GNU/Linux and get updated software from time to time legally over the network. That’s the same cost and better performance. Either way, the consumer gets more for less with GNU/Linux.

They won’t do it themselves. They will pay a PC technician to do that for them. Since the pirated copy of Windows doesn’t cost anything, essentially the customer is only paying for the service.

That’s something you can observe first hand if you get out and see more of the world, and it’s something you can’t see clearly from “the web”. As someone I though was a scientist at one point in your life, it seems to me you have fallen off the waggon. Your reasoning and research methods are scientifically unsound.

PCs without Windows are available. You just showed it.

Windows — not a monopoly.

End of story.

Nonsense. I have advised many times on shopping for PCs and the retailers do nothing for those I advise either. Schools are not dumpster-diving. They receive donations in bulk from governmental and business organizations “subsidizing” education. The PCs they get are what an individual might find in a dumpster, although in working order and with a supposedly legitimate licence for software. Schools prefer GNU/Linux because of the uptime and performance, but the donors insist on pushing that other OS, refurbishing with XP or whatever. Retailers are only too glad to sell to schools as long as they buy that other OS. The reason I got the contract at Easterville was because those PCs cost much more than a GNU/Linux thin client. We had no problem buying 96 GNU/Linux PCs for that project from an outfit in the USA. We would have been happier to buy from a Canadian supplier.

MacOS is not “a large number”. It’s modest and Apple published units sold. Read their SEC filings. MacOS in their last 10-K shipped only 16.7 million. Every OEM is shipping a lot of GNU/Linux PCs to large organizations. Dell is selling millions in China and India all by itself. The deficit of M$’s share is enormous compared to those numbers and it’s there quarter after quarter. It’s real.

Well, if you take the general population, then there are a certain percentage of those potential customers who are infants, or toddlers. Or in nursing homes or at a minimum unable to drive to the Linux store. That would cut down on the available market, eh?

The problem is that retailers are refusing to serve that market in deference to M$.

A pure figment of your imagination, Mr. Pogson. Total tripe. The real reason for merchants to ignore your desires is as you state: “I can live off what people leave in dumpsters so they will never have us for customers.”

I have found that all Linux fans that I know are precisely in the same mold as yourself. They are fundamentally hobbyist dweebs who take great pleasure in fiddling around with the hardware pieces and the bits and bytes of the software, too. Interestingly, a significant proportion of them are amateur radio enthusiasts as well. In the local LUG 4 of the 10 regulars are hams.

Yeah, right. ZaReason and others have been in business for how many years and adding staff but they can only sell on the web or in their own stores because retailers won’t sell GNU/Linux. What’s wrong with this picture? Remember ASUS was selling out globally and Walmart was too when they sold GNU/Linux here.

Nope. 1% of Canadians is 300K people. That’s enough of a market for a small business to expand in. When the product is out there and people see it, the market will expand just as GNU/Linux on netbooks and Android/Linux on smart thingies. The problem is that retailers are refusing to serve that market in deference to M$.