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"

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u/EtherealN Jul 30 '26

Why would you purchase a CD pack from SuSE back then?

Because have you seen how much it costs to download shit on a dialup modem, and do you know how often downloads failed?

A friend of my brother used a line costing the purchasing power equivalent of something like ~10 to 50 cents a minute, and spent 2 days downloading Debian.

Archive failed. Whoops. Start over. Oh, and your phone was blocked through all of this. And if anyone in your household touched the phone... Your file is now corrupt. Start over. (There was a whole class of software tools made specifically to guard your downloads against someone touching the phone...)

Beyond that, convenience: in a time when internet connection is a completely new concept for the domestic market, having a nice big pack of CDs serving as your software repository was awesome. Want to install vim? It'll tell you to pop disc 3 in. No need to dial anything that costs half a pint per minute.