I wouldn’t say every business, I’ve definitely worked somewhere where all our machines were cracked. but that’s going to be the exception not the rule obviously.

Most folks are on a license that includes m365/office, windows enterprise, exchange online, sharepoint online, some entra/intune/defender things and more for about $380/user per year.

I have worked in a place where 100% of the workforce used linux, which was logical seeing as the product was also linux

clearly you have never been to LATAM, India, Indochina, middle east, Russia, China or Africa

I bought a Framework with no preinstalled OS 😋

Edit: Desktop was built from parts, no pre-installed OS 😋😋

My PC all come as parts or second hand. Sometimes both.

Some mini PCs are possibly interesting new, but I wouldn't be getting one with windows if I do ever get one.

My laptop came without an OS

The thinkpad I bought (Not a used one btw) didnt had any os installed

I buy all my shit second hand. All 3 of my laptops and my desktop were bought used. I love e-waste and I know that it loves me too.

That said, I did forget prebuilt shit already has a license cooked into it lol. So yeah, my bad.

Where do people buy computers with linux from normal shops?

Sadly every nearly every windows-capable device sold without windows also has the cost of a windows license baked in too.

When I bought my first laptop you couldn't buy one with Linux preinstalled but I did decline the windows license and apply for and get a refund from Dell

Between Ventoy being able to make an installer that bypasses Win11's TPM requirement, and massgrave, it's trivially easy to put Win11 on older machines.

Now, why you'd want to is another matter. But sometimes you need to.

My Linux Mint laptop is being whiny, so I'm using my emergency Windows 10 laptop rn.

I have my OEM DVD for win 10 in the cupboard.

Me too, they just accepted my cracked Win7 installation and gave me a valid license for Win10 back then. Probably it was easier and more long-term profitable for them to simply dole out valid licenses, to bring those people into the fold.

I had a colleague in work come to me with exactly this, they'd got AI to spec them a PC for their kid to fit a certain budget.

The problem is the AI was using pricing data that was about a year out of date. It also massively over-specced (calling for 64GB of RAM for Roblox!).

The funny part was even when he challenged it back saying he couldn't find that RAM for anywhere near the price GPT quoted, the AI just argued back saying whatever store it was must be trying to scam him because RAM shouldn't be that expensive.

make copies for archival