"All of this was good news for the open source movement. To keep
costs down, the manufacturers shied away from pre-installing
expensive Microsoft products and instead distributed Linux (and
later various renditions of BSD and OpenSolaris too). Utilizing the
freedom offered by open source, manufacturers joined together to
share development costs, significantly reducing their operating
system outlay.
"It's no secret that, in the early days of the Good Enough
revolution, many users simply installed their old versions of
Windows XP on the new ultra-cheap computers. But when Microsoft
introduced licensing changes to stop this (a futile bid to force
users to upgrade), many stuck with the open source operating system
that came on their computers. To their apparent surprise, most
found that the open source OS did everything they needed. Just like
the hardware, the software was "good enough" (indeed, it was an
open source advocate who coined the phrase "The Good Enough
Revolution" on the PC World Linux Line blog back in 2009)."
