[cashewchoo]

I think it's a combination of:

* extremely, extremely thin margins

* in general, users are pretty low-discretion, which makes it hard to meaningfully differentiate your product

* deeply entrenched competition (what % of laptops are sold at best buy/etc?)

* the users who are high-discretion are going to be extremely demanding users. They're going to nitpick over small details in both hardware and software. And they're probably going to be installing their own OS (or at least reinstalling the existing one) and will generally be more demanding of both product design and support. Also, they probably have the tech skills to correctly point the finger at you when it's your fault. Whereas less discerning users might just go "Ugh bill gates!"

Doesn't help that the "linux laptop" niche was probably a big part of this "niche laptop" market segment and Dell and Lenovo are both kinda warming back up to that niche. e.g. the newest XPS's all work great on (latest kernel) linux.