Maybe I didn't get the idea across well in my post, but I'm worried that the option to boot other OSes will actually start to disappear from most consumer computers in the future - it's already happening in the case of chromebooks which have totally locked bootloaders, and I've also heard some very low cost windows pcs/laptops don't allow you to disable secure boot. The industry in general seems to be making more and more moves in this direction.
I'm anticipating that this will be more and more of a problem for us in the future.
That's why I think we should let computer manufacturers know that we linux users actually exist and that we actually buy computers, and locking bootloaders is a sure way to stop linux users considering your product.
All I'm saying is, please consider contacting the manufacturer of your computer or laptop that you run linux on and letting them know directly "I am your customer because your product allows me to run linux, you would not have made this sale otherwise", in the hopes that they hear us and keep doing the absolute bare minimum that lets us load and run linux.
If computer/laptop manufacturers just allow booting other OSes freely, then the linux developer community tends to do all or most of the hard work of implementing support (writing drivers etc) for free, and then linux works great without the manufacturer having to do anything. And then some number of linux users will end up buying some units from them just because it's known to work.
You mentioned steam, that's actually a very good example of linux users being profitable, probably the best example. I've bought a large number of games on steam and played them all on linux (the only OS I have) and I'm sure I'm not the only person in the world like that. According to steam statistics 3% of their users are on linux, that's higher than the amount of macOS users they have. Steam is undoubtedly making some real money from linux users.
I'm anticipating that this will be more and more of a problem for us in the future.
That's why I think we should let computer manufacturers know that we linux users actually exist and that we actually buy computers, and locking bootloaders is a sure way to stop linux users considering your product.
All I'm saying is, please consider contacting the manufacturer of your computer or laptop that you run linux on and letting them know directly "I am your customer because your product allows me to run linux, you would not have made this sale otherwise", in the hopes that they hear us and keep doing the absolute bare minimum that lets us load and run linux.
I think you're actually wrong that there's not money to be made from linux users.Fine ideas, but as @eriefisher told, they can't make much business from linux-users.
If computer/laptop manufacturers just allow booting other OSes freely, then the linux developer community tends to do all or most of the hard work of implementing support (writing drivers etc) for free, and then linux works great without the manufacturer having to do anything. And then some number of linux users will end up buying some units from them just because it's known to work.
You mentioned steam, that's actually a very good example of linux users being profitable, probably the best example. I've bought a large number of games on steam and played them all on linux (the only OS I have) and I'm sure I'm not the only person in the world like that. According to steam statistics 3% of their users are on linux, that's higher than the amount of macOS users they have. Steam is undoubtedly making some real money from linux users.
Statistics: Posted by dust hill resident — 2025-12-29 02:25