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> I don't know where you're buying PCs but where I'm from there is always an option to buy the PC with FreeDOS at a discount of about ~$20-30 compared to the Windows version. Lately, I also see an increase in Ubuntu computers.

I'm not from there, it seems. The best you can do here is build your own PC, or go with a distributor (typically Dell/Lenovo) whose configuration allows opting-out of buying an OS. Needless to say that it's not a mainstream purchasing behaviour.

> MSFT have spent a lot of time, effort and dev years ensuring that their customers can run their software without breakage and downtime.

That wasn't my point at all. It was to stress how the ludicrous track-record of Microsoft anticompetitive practices, establishing and sustaining a decades-long monopoly, barred non-expert and non-enthusiasts from experiencing (possibly favourable) alternatives.

> It was to stress how the ludicrous track-record of Microsoft anticompetitive practices, establishing and sustaining a decades-long monopoly, barred non-expert and non-enthusiasts from experiencing (possibly favourable) alternatives.

My point served to counter this very statement.

There are alternatives (Linux, macOS, FreeBSD etc. etc.) but none are favorable like you say. A big part of why this is the excellent job that MSFT did as a technical force looking to consolidate Windows as the OS standard all those years ago. The efforts taken by them to ensure broad based application support and customer research and support on Windows has contributed to the continued perpetuation of their monopoly. Were they ever the most technically advanced option? No. Is any of their software products absolutely perfect and without deficiencies? Also no. And yet they are possible the leading software company in the world. This is NOT solely due to their anticompetitive practices. Saying so is a form of denial about the true state of things.

I gave Canonical and Ubuntu as an example of someone else who has tried to step in the breach and failed to force out MSFT as an alternative for non-experts and non-enthusiasts. Ubuntu and the FOSS community are many things but friendly to beginners and non-technical people is not one of them. There have been tremendous advances in the past decade but we're nowhere close to this being the Year of the Linux Desktop. The bottom line is that mainstream (i.e. non-technical and non-enthusiast) consumers will choose to put their money where they get the best value and that remains MSFT and Windows.

> MSFT have spent a lot of time, effort and dev years ensuring that their customers can run their software without breakage and downtime

I don’t know about that, but they have spent a lot of hours making sure you can run .exe’s from 30 years back, which is wildly valuable to slow-moving corporations.

> I don’t know about that, but they have spent a lot of hours making sure you can run .exe’s from 30 years back, which is wildly valuable to slow-moving corporations.

Which ones? There are tools like dosbox to get old DOS programs running again.

Web browsers are remarkably backwards compatible as well. 20 year old websites continue to work fine.

The only difference is that the web platform wasn't very capable 20 years ago.

And where are you buying PCs? Microsoft hostages want to know.