There was a legal fight a decade ago in France to have the right to buy any laptop without Windows.
Because Windows is like "force sold" in combination with buying the hardware, where the hardware is a general purpose computer and that there is no reason you can't buy the hardware without and not pay their unnecessary tax to Microsoft.
Now, even if it is not very public, it is well known, and even if you can't buy most computers alone, you can still, in all case, ask the manufacturer to reimburse you for the windows licence that don't want to use.
This will work even if you just don't want the new "licence" because you want to reuse an old one, that is perfectly legal.
Something like 8/10 years ago I did the procedure and was given back something like 120/130€ I think, that will give the approximate price for windows that you pay with your laptop purchase....
Normally, a few years ago law should force retailer to display in sticker that part of the price that you will pay for windows for laptop sold with it. But I'm not sure that retailer are really doing it nowadays.
> Something like 8/10 years ago I did the procedure and was given back something like 120/130€ I think, that will give the approximate price for windows that you pay with your laptop purchase....
That almost sounds like they made a mistake and didn't realize they weren't supposed to refund that much. The OEM keys sold in bulk are not supposed to cost the manufacturer that much.
It's been 26 years since the Windows Refund Day protests and it still isn't particularly common for OEMs to comply with this request, so I'm surprised you were able to do it.
Lenovo has been doing this in Spain for quite a bit, and you can even buy them without any preinstalled OS at all for a lower price still. But at least here the option is typically available for ThinkPads rather than for more cheap consumer lines. Same with Acer. Dell offers Linux options but no "empty" option afaik.
I work at an e-waste recycling company, where we use Linux in precisely this way. I take corporate decommisioned laptops, wipe them, install Linux, run fastfetch, take pictures, and post on Ebay.
Most of it comes from businesses decommissioning their IT assets, but we also accept people walking in to drop things off. Most of that is "certified", meaning that we go through everything they dropped off, remove the drives, scan serial numbers, and ensure data on the drives are destroyed (either by physically destroying the drives, or overwriting them[0]). Laptops with sufficiently high specs are stacked on pallets in the warehouse area I work in, where it becomes a sort of free-for-all with my 3 co-workers there. Most of what we have is 5 to 10 years old, but sometimes there's the occasional retro piece, or electronic equipment that isn't a computer, like radars, lidars, or A/V stuff. I've been excited to pull out a laptop with a recent 14th gen (or so) Intel Core CPU, only to be let down when I discover it has a broken screen or is unbootable.
For the longest time, Microsoft was writing into its OEM contracts that they had to pay per machine shipped, regardless of if Windows was actually installed. It's well-documented, including by Wikipedia[1]. As for why they stopped, it certainly wasn't out of a sense of kindness or duty. My best guess is that it was an indirect result of the antitrust lawsuits[2], and they figured that they didn't want any more legal attention.
Because there's no way Microsoft is charging Lenovo $140 for Windows Home, and also because people who don't want Windows are likely less price sensitive than the average user so you can charge them more anyway.
Microsoft was making it very hard for OEMs to sell some computers without Windows for a number of decades. I would assume they are more afraid of an increase in law enforcement than usual.
It used to be FreeDOS running on baremetal, but the combination of the lack of NVMe drivers for DOS and BIOS functionality becoming broken over time made it impossible.
I find it so wacky that they didn't just replace the option with a random Linux. Or if it needs to be crippled (so that normal users don't try to use it in that state), coulda just been FreeBSD or something. Anything that boots on modern UEFI, starts at a command line interface, and has no hope of ever supporting Wifi would have accomplished the same goal of technically shipping a computer with an OS but scaring the user away from stubbing their toe on it.
Most laptops run Linux, but few provide official support for it. The Gen 12 and 11 did, and you could get Linux pre-installed. But there's no "Linux" option on the Gen 13 store page.
They've been doing this in Korea for a decade already, funny to read it now framed as a new development. I guess the news hadn't spread to the English-speaking world.
In fact, over here every brand does it. Even US brands like HP and Dell.
No mention of UEFI keys?? Lenovo must be excluding these keys or it is a free lunch to everyone that buys the non-Windows system and then goes and installs Windows by themselves.
In 2018, when I purchased a Lenovo T580, what I did was browse their certification tables for models certified for Linux (they would certify some for Ubuntu and some for RHEL.)
Then I purchased one of those RHEL models as a Windows machine, and got the best of both worlds. It turned out to be quite handy as, during the long service life of that notebook system, the usefulness of Linux on my "desktop" wore extremely thin and I realized that Windows had been right for me all along, so after several years of smoothly running Fedora I was able to fall back to a very very nice, Made for Windows 10 system.
There was a legal fight a decade ago in France to have the right to buy any laptop without Windows.
Because Windows is like "force sold" in combination with buying the hardware, where the hardware is a general purpose computer and that there is no reason you can't buy the hardware without and not pay their unnecessary tax to Microsoft.
Now, even if it is not very public, it is well known, and even if you can't buy most computers alone, you can still, in all case, ask the manufacturer to reimburse you for the windows licence that don't want to use.
This will work even if you just don't want the new "licence" because you want to reuse an old one, that is perfectly legal.
Something like 8/10 years ago I did the procedure and was given back something like 120/130€ I think, that will give the approximate price for windows that you pay with your laptop purchase....
Normally, a few years ago law should force retailer to display in sticker that part of the price that you will pay for windows for laptop sold with it. But I'm not sure that retailer are really doing it nowadays.
> Something like 8/10 years ago I did the procedure and was given back something like 120/130€ I think, that will give the approximate price for windows that you pay with your laptop purchase....
That almost sounds like they made a mistake and didn't realize they weren't supposed to refund that much. The OEM keys sold in bulk are not supposed to cost the manufacturer that much.
It's been 26 years since the Windows Refund Day protests and it still isn't particularly common for OEMs to comply with this request, so I'm surprised you were able to do it.
Lenovo has been doing this in Spain for quite a bit, and you can even buy them without any preinstalled OS at all for a lower price still. But at least here the option is typically available for ThinkPads rather than for more cheap consumer lines. Same with Acer. Dell offers Linux options but no "empty" option afaik.
Linux is free and proves the hardware isn't defective when you press the power button.
I work at an e-waste recycling company, where we use Linux in precisely this way. I take corporate decommisioned laptops, wipe them, install Linux, run fastfetch, take pictures, and post on Ebay.
https://www.ebay.com/str/evolutionecycling
How do you get your hands on the hardware?
Most of it comes from businesses decommissioning their IT assets, but we also accept people walking in to drop things off. Most of that is "certified", meaning that we go through everything they dropped off, remove the drives, scan serial numbers, and ensure data on the drives are destroyed (either by physically destroying the drives, or overwriting them[0]). Laptops with sufficiently high specs are stacked on pallets in the warehouse area I work in, where it becomes a sort of free-for-all with my 3 co-workers there. Most of what we have is 5 to 10 years old, but sometimes there's the occasional retro piece, or electronic equipment that isn't a computer, like radars, lidars, or A/V stuff. I've been excited to pull out a laptop with a recent 14th gen (or so) Intel Core CPU, only to be let down when I discover it has a broken screen or is unbootable.
[0] https://wipeos.com/
This is business as usual in Indonesia - even very expensive Dell computers came with FreeDOS instead of Windows.
An example = https://www.tokopedia.com/nescomputer/dell-poweredge-t440-xs...
Considering the exorbitant cost of computers in Indonesia, it makes sense to offer non-Windows variants.
Why is anyone surprised by this? Linux laptop doesn't require paying a windows licence seems like a non story.
For the longest time, Microsoft was writing into its OEM contracts that they had to pay per machine shipped, regardless of if Windows was actually installed. It's well-documented, including by Wikipedia[1]. As for why they stopped, it certainly wasn't out of a sense of kindness or duty. My best guess is that it was an indirect result of the antitrust lawsuits[2], and they figured that they didn't want any more legal attention.
[1] "Microsoft once assessed license fees based on the number of computers an OEM sold, regardless of whether a Windows license was included." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundling_of_Microsoft_Windows [2] The case in question concerned software bundling of Internet Explorer, but it's not hard to imagine eventual attention towards OS bundling of Windows itself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
Ok that makes sense. I didn't know that. Thanks :)
Because there's no way Microsoft is charging Lenovo $140 for Windows Home, and also because people who don't want Windows are likely less price sensitive than the average user so you can charge them more anyway.
Microsoft was making it very hard for OEMs to sell some computers without Windows for a number of decades. I would assume they are more afraid of an increase in law enforcement than usual.
I'm not suprised, but still happy.
Somewhat related, HP did (does?) have a FreeDOS option, although it was a FreeDOS VM running under Debian:
The weird Hewlett Packard FreeDOS option (2022) (tmm.cx)
107 points by wibbily 55 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 33 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43232057
https://blog.tmm.cx/2022/05/15/the-very-weird-hewlett-packar...
It used to be FreeDOS running on baremetal, but the combination of the lack of NVMe drivers for DOS and BIOS functionality becoming broken over time made it impossible.
I find it so wacky that they didn't just replace the option with a random Linux. Or if it needs to be crippled (so that normal users don't try to use it in that state), coulda just been FreeBSD or something. Anything that boots on modern UEFI, starts at a command line interface, and has no hope of ever supporting Wifi would have accomplished the same goal of technically shipping a computer with an OS but scaring the user away from stubbing their toe on it.
Yep, Windows tax is real.
In last september I bought Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 without any OS preinstalled for around $100 less than the exactly same model with Windows.
The latest model X1 Carbon (Gen 13) doesn't appear to officially support Linux at this time, unfortunately.
https://www.phoronix.com/review/lenovo-thinkpad-x1-gen13-lin...
Most laptops run Linux, but few provide official support for it. The Gen 12 and 11 did, and you could get Linux pre-installed. But there's no "Linux" option on the Gen 13 store page.
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/t...
They've been doing this in Korea for a decade already, funny to read it now framed as a new development. I guess the news hadn't spread to the English-speaking world.
In fact, over here every brand does it. Even US brands like HP and Dell.
No mention of UEFI keys?? Lenovo must be excluding these keys or it is a free lunch to everyone that buys the non-Windows system and then goes and installs Windows by themselves.
In 2018, when I purchased a Lenovo T580, what I did was browse their certification tables for models certified for Linux (they would certify some for Ubuntu and some for RHEL.)
Then I purchased one of those RHEL models as a Windows machine, and got the best of both worlds. It turned out to be quite handy as, during the long service life of that notebook system, the usefulness of Linux on my "desktop" wore extremely thin and I realized that Windows had been right for me all along, so after several years of smoothly running Fedora I was able to fall back to a very very nice, Made for Windows 10 system.
it's about time (!)
I remember I did it in the past with Dell (super cool company), and even with Acer.
In Italy you are entitled about 100€ back (and the law is pretty strict) anyhow.
That is definitely the case in anything I've bought from them.
monopoly