At the time (and possibly still) Dell was promoting laptops with Ubuntu preinstalled. These laptops also avoided the “Windows Tax” and were ~$50-$100 cheaper.

*The “Windows Tax” being that Windows cost money. Most companies just built the cost of Windows into their product with no (easy) method of not purchasing Windows. So if you bought a $800 laptop, you actually bought a $700 laptop plus a Window license, even if you never planned on using Windows.

Also worth adding, since this story was big many years ago, when the college was contacted they were fine with her laptop. They had no requirement that she use Wimdows.