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Hardware problems are a frequently understated barrier to switching, particularly for laptop users. Long time Linux users are generally selecting their machines with Linux compatibility in mind and so don’t see much of this, but the corpus of potential switchers haven’t, and it creates a lot of friction. It’s difficult to convince people to replace their perfectly good laptop with something else just for the sake of trying out an alternative OS.


Also, it's pretty common to install linux to revive old laptops that might have outdated hardware.


I guess that's a different baseline?

If I try out linux and it breaks my laptop, I'm mad at linux.

If windows stops supporting my laptop, or updates make it unusable, and linux makes it usable, I love linux.


Yes, this is an important point. In future, I will always buy Linux compatible laptops and I'm sure most of these problems will go away.




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