Really.
System76 is US based. Ditto for Ohava.com. Ditto for ThinkPenguin. I could not look at BlackStoneSystems. I am on a RHEL machine, and their website requires a newer flash than the one I have. Regarding living in Europe and ordering a laptop from the US:
- I don't know about you, but I would prefer buying my laptops from a shop I could return something if necessary.
I also would rather NOT pay import taxes on my laptop...
(Ok, I didn't flat out state that I live in Europe, but then, why do you just assume I am US based :-P)
I have no doubt that someone with more time could find a seller in Germany or France serving continental Europe. But my point is this: if you just walk into a large 'general' computer shop all laptops you'll find will be running Windows7 or OSX. Ditto for any 'regular' computer seller on the web. Hence I call buying a laptop with Linux pre-installed a 'dire proposition'.
That I have to go to a small specialist shop to skip paying for the OS license I'll ditch, was exactly my point. FWIW Often the economy of scale, and faster turn-over of larger brands will mean that I can buy a better spec'ed laptop WITH Windows and still pay less than what I would by buying from a smaller 'linux' focused shop. (Which of the shops you linked to has anything like an ultra-book in the pipeline?) Which -again- is my whole point, Linux laptops is a tiny niche and getting one is particularly cumbersome (relative to the 'trouble' I would have buying something with Windows7 or from Apple).
I did look at the local Lenovo.com shop and some other places some months ago, and there was nothing I could buy without Windows.