If I had to pay 2x the retail price for Linux compatible hardware, I'd have never gotten into Linux as a teenager with no money and no access to special hardware.
Even 1x the retail price is too much. Like many (perhaps most) people here, I got into Linux as a teenager by dual-booting on hardware I (or rather my parents) already owned. If I had to pay for extra hardware just to try Linux, I would probably still be using MS-DOS and Windows.
What cesarb said already, rings true to me: even if these devices were available at a price comparable to retail, no way in hell I would buy a special "Linux phone/laptop" in addition to my regular one. I just wouldn't have had the financial resources to explore the world of "open" things.
To address your proper comment, any amount of time spent on window-shopping any "open hardware by design" project pricing pages will show exorbitant amounts vs comparable spec consumer/mainstream hardware.
Examples:
* Talos Workstation, any Librem product, MNT Reform: self-explanatory. Absolutely mad price range for someone who is not sure whether they should buy one/need one, even for someone already in full-time employment in the IT field. If that's what you need or want, and you're sure you both need it and can afford it? Great. But not accessible to hobbyists.
* the Framework laptop/System76: the most basic configurations are around $1k/£1k. I don't think it's likely I would be able to obtain a cheaper one second-hand locally.
I am not going to make a survey of all Linux/open laptop vendors out there who sell worldwide (or at least, US and Europe), but I assume it's similar. If you can point to reasonably priced laptops from 2 different vendors or more, with specs suitable to using the laptop as a modern-day daily driver, I will retract this point.
* OpenPandora/DragonBox Pyra: I was extremely interested in this one, but bloody hell, spending 300-500EUR on a piece of hardware that will basically only ever play source ports of games and emulators? I knew straight away that I would only ever lick this thing through the virtual shopfront window, because for what you got, that price range was extremely hard to justify. This was before ARM gaming was a thing in any way.
* OpenMoko: as far as I know, the only attempt at an open hardware smartphone (that got something off the ground) until the PinePhone came along. Reading about it at the time, I recognised that its hardware is outdated, and that the software is irredeemable to anyone not willing to put blood, sweat and tears into it. Meanwhile, I could've picked up a CyanogenMod Android phone and had 80-90% of the benefit, for about the same price, and comparable or much better specs.
I don't blame anyone on the list above for the prices, and I don't think their products are crap. All I'm saying is that for someone on a budget, getting one of those is unviable. Either it's too expensive outright, or when it isn't, the result is not usable as a daily driver because you would give up basic features that you actually need. And when I mean basic, I mean "it cannot use school/work/bank/government/messaging apps made for the current duopoly in this device category", not "uses an older version of USB".
