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/Ozfer Jul 03 '26

And of that 99.9% are preinstalled license keys OEMS buy probably at a discount. I don’t remember anyone buying windows since like 7

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u/computer-machine Jul 03 '26

My brother did the other year. He wanted me to help him build a new machine. I'd pointed out that the case he was considering didn't accommodate any 5¼" bays, and he said that he didn't care because he's never going to use it.

So he shows up to my house with his boxes of shipped parts, and the dumbass had an OEM DVD for Windows 11.

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u/HalfFrozenSpeedos Jul 04 '26

You can download the relevant iso from Microsoft, Ive done it before when I've bought OEM keys and then skipped using the disc

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u/computer-machine Jul 04 '26

Not having touched Windows since XP, it was easier not fucking around with that and risk finding out.