OEMs have been doing basically this for years with their phones for decades at this point, pushing customized builds of Android with every phone they make, this has been successful to close the gap Apple created when they released the iPhone.

I guess a hurdle smartphones didn't have as they were breaking into a new market is compatibility; outside of the tech world, virtually all of corporate and personal environment is dependent on Windows and Windows-only software. Steam has shown it can work with SteamOS and Proton, making gaming on Linux a reality for a wide audience. What's missing is a major OEM to build a high-spec laptop with a custom Linux build to optimize performance and battery life, with a decent Windows compatibility layer and that would provide software companies an incentive to sell native Linux versions and support. Is Samsung really going to keep their laptop line depend on Windows, and leave it on the side-line as they will never be able to really optimize battery life and performance and compare to the MacBooks?