The issue was that people wanted to buy Windows machines and Microsoft&#x27;s licenses said that, if a company wanted to sell <i>any</i> copies of Windows, then every machine they sold had to have a copy of Windows installed. There were very few pre-installed Linux vendors  (and still are) prior to the Netscape lawsuit, when Microsoft purportedly dropped the requirement.<p>I never really repurposed any old machines; I&#x27;ve always been a Unix guy, so I went from an old Amiga to Linux as the first desktop Unix I could get. (I have a floppy with 0.99pl14, the first kernel I ever built, here somewhere...)<p>I&#x27;ve also built my share of machines, but that never really worked for laptops. Plus, I&#x27;m old and tired.