[scholia]

You are exactly right on both counts.

The main attempt to sell Linux to end users was the use of different versions on netbooks, which were mainly bought on price by relatively clueless users.

I talked to one supplier about the obvious cost-of-Linux-support problem at their launch. We won't do support, they said, it will be like an appliance: we'll just reset to factory condition.

You can imagine how that turned out...