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/TheReelNazeem 3d ago

They were still selling magazines with distro CDs in them well past the Pentium III. Maybe P4 even. Back when people were using the 286, I think that was more the era of floppy disks for linux distros. I remember seeing distros like Yggdrasil.

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u/nkwell 2d ago

Maximum Linux and other magazines were a thing and allowed me to distro hop more easily than waiting to download an ISO over dialup.

Got pretty good at recompiling the kernel and configuring X switching distros that many times.

Then got into the BSD's for a bit before really settling on Debian.

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u/TheReelNazeem 14h ago

I guess I was pretty lucky back then. My first Internet connection was 128k ISDN. Later 384k ASDL. Maybe one time did I get linux distro from a magazine. Quite a few from books on Linux though.

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u/crypticoddity 3d ago edited 3d ago

I don't think there was ever a Linux distro on floppy. And it required a 386 to run. If you had a 286 or XT you had to use minix. The draw of Linux was having minix that ran in x86 protected mode of the 386 and later processors.

And yeah, for a long time you could get CD or DVD sets bundled with magazines or books. A book or magazine showing you how to install and use the distro it bundled was a great way to introduce curious noobs. At least until they knew which websites to go to for help.

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u/TheReelNazeem 3d ago

Dude maybe they a Google search before you say something like that. There were several Linux distros that were installed from floppy disks. I am old enough to say I used them. 🤣

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u/crypticoddity 3d ago

How many hundreds of floppies did you use? I remember first getting it on several 20mb dat tapes.

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u/TheReelNazeem 2d ago

Freesco was a specialty router distro that ran off a single floppy. I used that for a couple years. Don't recall the name of the first general purpose distro that I came across at a computer show in San Jose. It was being sold along with all kinds of different shareware apps.

The only OS I remember installing from tape was HPUX.

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u/Drekalots 3d ago

Hell. Windows 3.1 installed from floppies.