Here's a part-fictional account of events that are largely my fault:
- Friend got a new laptop and I elect to install Debian (or whatever OS I find suitable at that moment) side-by-side with the pre-installed Windows.
- I show Friend around since he finds the interface unfamiliar, and I get a dry mouth explaining the advantages, while trying hard to avoid Windows bashing. He sort of agrees.
- I upgrade it later on (mainly because I'm hoping the new hotness will get their Wi-Fi hardware working).
- The upgrade breaks something else in the process, and I spend hours fixing it...
- Only to have them spend their computing lives in Windows since it's more familiar (as well as the fact the software that came with their cell-phone doesn't run anywhere else).
- We computer 'geniuses' all know that Windows has a nasty habit of overwriting the boot partition such that an already-installed OS is no longer bootable, so I gotta come over, to make it bootable again (and this is made worse by the fact that reinstalls are pretty common when Windows gives trouble).