I guess your definition of "ease of setup" is not the same as mine.
If I could be guaranteed that everything work perfectly out of the box with no weird driver issues when I burn and install an Ubuntu .ISO, I agree that the OS being default is not a necessity.
But I've only heard of this being the case on a small whitelist of "known to work well with Linux" devices, like Thinkpads, etc., which don't fulfill the other conditions.
Again, I'm not just arguing ideology, here: I'd be genuinely happy for you to show me a non-Apple laptop that meets my criteria, if one exists.
If I could be guaranteed that everything work perfectly out of the box with no weird driver issues when I burn and install an Ubuntu .ISO, I agree that the OS being default is not a necessity.
But I've only heard of this being the case on a small whitelist of "known to work well with Linux" devices, like Thinkpads, etc., which don't fulfill the other conditions.
Again, I'm not just arguing ideology, here: I'd be genuinely happy for you to show me a non-Apple laptop that meets my criteria, if one exists.