On 12/16/20 7:13 PM, Lamar Owen wrote: > On 12/16/20 12:55 PM, Ljubomir Ljubojevic wrote: >> Off-topic: >> >> On 12/16/20 4:11 PM, Lamar Owen wrote: >>> 2.) The enthusiasts who were building their own machines from parts. >>> That group is small, but they also tend to be very vocal; IT >>> professionals often fall into this group, and MS wanted to keep them >>> happy for all the reasons previously posted. >> In less developed countries PC's are sold without any software, even >> laptops. ... >> Since it is illegal to install pirated software, PC resellers are not >> allowed to preinstall pirated software, but no one can prevent them to >> sell it without any OS/software on it, so 70-80% of PC's sold in Serbia >> are sold without it. Similar is in many countries outside of "Western >> countries". > It is certainly different in different countries; I can only speak for > what I see in my own area. I don't see a lot of new PCs sold without > some license of some kind; Dell Precision workstations and PowerEdge > servers are available with Linux preinstalled, and PowerEdge servers can > be purchased without any OS. Most PC manufacturers here have deals with > Microsoft to prevent them selling PCs without OS. That is because MS had deal with Intel that every x86 chip already had bundled "MS DOS" and large companies that sell PC's formed in 1980-1990's. Before ~1990 only way to buy PC in Yugoslavia/Serbia was "smuggle" it (individual could legally bring parts into the country up to certain amount of money, so several people had to travel and bring in separate parts, share/pool the money limit) from Austria and Germany. Software would be bought Austria/Germany but then cloned for free since there was no one to enforce laws from USA. After brake up of Yugoslavia, sanctions were introduced that prevented legal import so PC clones were imports from Asia and profit-driven software pirates rose up, charging only small amount of fee for cloning/copying service rendered. So everyone learned that pirated software is "safe" and after few decades of very low incomes and cheep hardware, all large PC shops grew from small "assemble parts and install pirated software"businesses and good luck in teaching population software has to be paid for when it is 40%+ of price of hardware. Only way to not use pirated software and not be considered a moron for wasting hard earned money is FOSS, free Linux, then you are *forced* to use Libre Office, Gimp, Inkscape. Then you are considered only a weirdo, eccentric... It does not help that any banking software is Windows only and any document that comes from govt is made in MS Office and always have some small but important compatibility issues. That is why I bought laptop with bundled Windows and dualbooted CentOS, so I can legally run Windows VM for banking software... :-( -- Ljubomir Ljubojevic (Love is in the Air) PL Computers Serbia, Europe StarOS, Mikrotik and CentOS/RHEL/Linux consultant