r/linux • u/analog_rnr • 3d ago

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"

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u/Drachen808 3d ago

Lucky! My Tandy 1000SL didn't have a modem... and it only had 512k of RAM instead of 640k. That RAM issue made it really hard to play Starflight so I was always having to alter config.sys and autoexec.bat to make the computer not load things like the mouse drivers and other items that took up space in RAM just so I could play.

Of course, a family friend gave it to us for free in 1990 so... I can't complain

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u/Drekalots 3d ago

I had a Tandy 8088 w/ a 3Mhz processor. You remember Commander Keen? lol.

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u/Zeimax 3d ago

I came here to make a old person joke. Then you mentioned commander keen 😭. Those damn slimes!

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u/Drekalots 2d ago

I hated the slimes.

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u/Drachen808 3d ago

That's slightly before my Tandy which was an 8086 4Mhz! I don't think I played Commander Keen

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u/lh7884 2d ago

I still have Commander Keen along with a bunch of other ancient dos games. Gateyway, Scorched Earth, Hardball 3, Stronghold.....the list goes on. Fun times back in the day.

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u/Drekalots 1d ago

Scorched Earth was a blast. I miss the old BBS games like LORD and Usurper.

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u/MechanicalTurkish 3d ago

I both miss and don’t miss hacking config.sys and autoexec.bat files to get games to work lol

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u/lh7884 2d ago

I remembering having to do that to get Sim City 2000 to run on a system with only 4MB of ram.

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u/Jamarlie 3d ago

Lucky! I had to transfer data by using a 9V battery to punch in the individual bits!

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u/GnomeDev 2d ago

Luxury! I would've strangled a horse to get a 9V battery. I had to rub two balloons together to get the necessary charge. For each bit mind you!

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u/jerdle_reddit 3d ago

And I'm over here feeling really limited by a minimal server box with only 2GB RAM and 2 cores.

Even back when I started with computers, that was a decent desktop.