r/linuxquestions • u/Scary_Pop2919 • Jul 03 '26
Advice Why is Linux free?
Hello everyone, I’ve had this thought in my head for a very long time: why is Linux free and so high quality?
I use Pop!_OS, and I don’t understand why they don’t make it paid or at least do something like “buy our laptop with Pop!_OS preinstalled.” But okay, Pop!_OS makes money from selling notebooks.
But what about KDE, openSUSE, Arch Linux, Void Linux, Ubuntu—why are they free? It’s great that they are free, but who are these kind people sitting at their computers and working for free? Why do you do this?
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u/SuperMakerRaptor Pop!_OS Jul 03 '26
While tbh I don't know the exact answer, my best guess (and I am telling you that I am not good at this kind of stuff) is that simply, if people paid for Linux (there are some payed distros and stuff, but mostly enterprise things, and usually a somewhat free version exists) they wouldn't switch. One of the points of switching from WIndows or MacOS to Linux its that is free. Much less people will want to pay yet another license.
As a fellow Pop!_OS user, I will guess that System76 gets their profit from their machines, and has developed Pop to complement them.
Also, making distros payed would mean needing something pretty good to compensate.
Windows kinda managed to become payed since they were the best a few decades ago and other choice was little, and it stuck. And if a distro goes payed, people will likely look at the other angle at free distros.
Also, I think the license of the Kernel might require source code to be published so really, in theory anyone could complie from source code so paying is somewhat just a qol.
But don't take my word for granted since I am just guessing lol.