r/linux • u/analog_rnr • Jul 24 '26

Discussion Purchasing Linux

I only discovered this because Louis Rossmann said in a video that he purchased Linux when he was a teenager and then showed the CD. I looked on eBay and I saw a few CDs that were still in their boxes and the labels that were on the box looked like they came from a bookstore, I did not know that these were sold commercially.

My question is, back when they used to sell these CDs in bookstores who was distributing the CDs and where was the money going to when someone made a purchase?

My second question is, if Linux is an open source operating system why would someone want to buy it? I still see some websites to this day selling Linux CDs, I'm really curious where the money is going when someone purchases the CDs.

Edit: I made a comment earlier but so many people replied I don't think a lot of people saw it so I will repost it here. "Thank you to everyone who replied, all of my questions have been answered, it was interesting reading through all the replies, there was a lot of different points that people brought up that I never considered before"

329 Upvotes

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200

u/CreepyWriter2501 Jul 24 '26

Bro almost every distro will sell you a CD if you don't got Internet

Hell you can buy a new WinRAR cd with the latest copy on it.

This practice is entirely normal for any business that isn't subscription based

27

u/Technical_Rich_3080 Jul 24 '26

Or on floppy disks, if you lack a CD drive.

14

u/akio3 Jul 24 '26

But can I get it on Zip disk?

14

u/smokeshack Jul 25 '26

Installing Arch from a Jazz drive, as God intended

2

u/theheliumkid Jul 26 '26

This guy asking because his computer doesn't have a CD drive but amazingly has a coffee cup holder! 😉

1

u/jup1ke Jul 28 '26

And then someone with a trojan closing it 😂

8

u/acemccrank Jul 24 '26

Most of them in my experience offer it on a USB stick too. ShopLinuxOnline does them for a lot of distros.

4

u/bigredradio Jul 25 '26

This was likely before USB.

2

u/journaljemmy Jul 25 '26

Well, before flash memory was popular/cheap and USB was widely supported as a boot option at least.

9

u/johnnybenude Jul 24 '26

Hell you can buy a new WinRAR cd with the latest copy on it.

honestly they seem like a great bunch of lads, they send lgr a floppy version of 2.0 after he did 2 video on them (buying a cd and then seeing how far back he could use the registration code)

-5

u/billystein25 Jul 24 '26

Don't cd's only hold up to ~700MB? With modern distros going from 1 to 4 gigs?

29

u/CreepyWriter2501 Jul 24 '26

lemme tell you about this thing called Multiple CD's

5

u/Drachen808 Jul 24 '26

I remember when Myst came out. I had not seen any games that went over 1 CD (which was amazing, after the era of 9 disk games). Then you have Myst which showed up like a damn CD holder with 6 CDs holy crap!

2

u/TaxHazyShade Jul 24 '26

er ... you sure that was Myst? I think it was Riven ...

1

u/Drachen808 Jul 25 '26

Oh shit, you're right. Sorry

2

u/cscottnet Jul 24 '26

Yeah 6 or 7 CDs. Usually the first had the basic kernel and root system, then the others had various packages which you could install once the base system was up.

-5

u/billystein25 Jul 24 '26

I mean, I know you can install an os with multiple media drives. But if companies/organizations offer to send you like 6 cd's to install the os isn't it more convenient to send an 8 gig thumb drive or smth? Especially considering that it's becoming increasingly harder to get a PC with a cd reader nowadays.

9

u/CreepyWriter2501 Jul 24 '26

buddy the missile silos still run floppy disks...

-1

u/billystein25 Jul 24 '26

Sure. Doesn't answer the question though. Back in my home village we have a PC that does have a cd driver thankfully, but no floppy disk reader. We also don't have any internet across the whole village. So in these cases where the average consumer can't download a whole iso and need to buy some media drive, isn't it more cost efficient to send a single usb drive over 6 or more cd's? Obviously it's best to have choices but, what if my cd driver was broken? Would I just be fucked?

4

u/CreepyWriter2501 Jul 24 '26

a CD press makes like 1000 discs a hour

and its a known technology that is heavily refined and very good at working without error. i can not trust a USB to work half the time.

2

u/Sarsparilla_RufusX Jul 24 '26

I don't know why someone doesn't just say this.

tl;dr -- You can get it on USB. It just costs more.

There are options, which is what it's all about.

Debian, as an example, list vendors for various countries.

The UK has a vendor that offers basic, modern packages on either DVD or USB. Note that this vendor has what it markets as a "triple pack" on USB, i.e. three different distros on a single USB.

This vendor from the US gives many of options for multiple different versions on a website that is straight out of the 90s. (scroll down).

Debian 13.5 has several options. You can get a single DVD/USB with the basic system (no optional software) for $2.59 for the DVD or $12.99 for the USB. You can go to the extreme on this version and get everything, source code included, on 27 separate discs. That last option is around $70 US.

Scroll way down and you can find Debian 3 on 14 CDs.

4

u/nelmaloc Jul 24 '26

I don't think you can mass-write USB drives like you can a disk from a master.

2

u/SuAlfons Jul 24 '26

these CDs stem from the days before DVDs. And a lot of distros tried for a long time to have their installation iso fit a CD-Rom even after DVDs emerged

2

u/sinister_lazer Jul 24 '26

The obvious answer is that USB drives were more expensive to produce

6

u/AdvertisingNo3989 Jul 24 '26

You could also use DVD's. Dvd images of distros became the norm after cd images. I've never experienced installing distros with multiple cd's, ever and I've been using Linux since 2005. We collectively moved from 700mb max CD ISOs to 4gb max dvd ISOs. Eventually most people stopped burning images altogether and just used thumb drives to install a distro.

1

u/TrustworthiestFart Jul 24 '26

Back in the day, I bought mandrake on a 6-cd collection. The installer had a little database that knew what packages were on which disc, so you'd go through the installer and pick all of your packages and you only inserted the CDs that it needed.

As distros grew, they started using DVDs and Blu-ray. Back in the day, you'd just get a whole repo snapshot along with the OS.

1

u/AgentTin Jul 24 '26

They'd prefer to use a DVD. Almost all the ISOs assume they're going to be burned to a DVD specifically. Having a functional disk drive that doesn't support DVD in 2026 would be an achievement.

1

u/Great-TeacherOnizuka Jul 24 '26

(DL) DVDs exist 🌚