Time is money- plenty of people would trade $200 for not having to spend time doing that. That&#x27;s the sort of thing that&#x27;s really fun and cool and interesting if someone&#x27;s a hobbyist and&#x2F;or student and&#x2F;or in the larval hacker stage, but at some point in life after spending decades having to make sure their hardware is supported by Linux&#x2F;FreeBSD&#x2F;whatever, the bloom can come off that rose pretty hard and it&#x27;s a blessing to just give someone money to worry about something you don&#x27;t want (or don&#x27;t have the time) to spend time doing.<p>Of course, plenty of people do have plenty of time to read HOWTOs and hardware compatibility lists and so on and still enjoy doing so- more power to them. Especially if $200 (or whatever) is still a meaningful amount of money to them that they need for other things. But I&#x27;ve always felt that a big reason why so many people advocate that approach and present it as a rational choice is because they themselves enjoy doing that and would do it anyway regardless of the time&#x2F;money tradeoff.