I'm asking, over on Quora :

In my current search for a new laptop I keep finding what seem to be surprising lacks in the market.

In particular, how come it's 2010 and overt support for Linux from major laptop manufacturers is still non-existent?

It occurs to me, that even if they refuse to supply linux pre-installed, any major laptop maker could at least afford to hire a couple of linux geeks to a) try to get linux working on each of their models, b) blog about the experience (ie. what did they have to do? what drivers needed recompiling? where do you get them? etc.)

As far as I can see, none of the major suppliers : Dell, HP, Sony, Samsung, Asus, Toshiba etc. have anything like a URL ( linux-geeks.dell.com etc.) where you can go and get information about running linux on their machines.

The more I think about it, that absence is pretty amazing. Is there really NO market advantage in supporting Linux users of your machines? Are Microsoft (not so) subtly discouraging them?

So, the question part :

- are any PC makers doing interesting things to support Linux on their hardware (and I just didn't notice)?

- if not, why not? What blind-spots are preventing them grabbing a bit of competitive advantage this way?