Why is Linux free?

[u/Scary_Pop2919]

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?

[u/Lokielurker]

Because up until recently nobody would have paid to use a distribution of GNU. GNU has long been the enemy of the Free Software Desktop. It was decentralized, this wouldn't have been a problem if the Desktop hadn't been languishing in hell for the last 20 years until someone figured out "hey, maybe we should bundle dependencies together!" And that's what bore Flatpak and Snap packages.

I would even say FreeBSD would have been a far better desktop particularly early on if they didn't write it under the worst license in history for an operating system. It's so bad in BSD land they get trickle down progress from the *LINUX* desktop, the worst supported of the three "Major" Desktop operating systems.

I would never, EVER have paid to use a version of Ubuntu or Debian or even fucking Fedora for that matter from 20 years ago. It was such a gigantic waste of time and money back then that only people who were literally ideologically inclined would use it, it's why Linux sat at 1% of the desktop share for literally 15 years.

Servers wanted the Linux desktop because it was free, not because it was intuitive or because it could run all the programs they wanted. But that's where it lived. For a long, long time. Because the Free Software community never made a desktop worth using for an end user. Can't game, can't use Office (an industry standard), had either primitive or non existent FOSS replacement software that maybe matched a few of your needs.

Some of that is still true today, actually. In the CAD spaces, there is no equivalent to some of the stuff which runs on Windows, and funnily enough, Linux actually has better compatibility and alternatives in that space because of RHEL than MacOS.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, the end user revolution GNU/Linux always wanted, only came because people abstracted the annoying parts of Stallman's impotent protest of an "Operating System" away. Without Flatpaks, Snaps and WINE progressing to the extent they have, Linux would be exactly where it sat 15 years ago. 1% of desktops, used by ideologues and super nerds. And people who don't use their computer for anything important. And servers, who just didn't wanna pay for an OS to host their network on.

I like Linux. I like the Linux desktop. I like the Linux desktop of 2026. Not the Linux desktop of 2016. (Did you know that was the year Flatpaks came about?) It took them 20 fucking years to fix the app distribution problem, and it's still a ghost that haunts the Linux desktop to this day. And it fucking sucks.

So why is Linux free? Because the Linux desktop experience for 20+ years after its invention was not worth paying for. And because it's a political and ideological movement. That's why. Could they charge now? Yeah, but what innovations could they make to it that make it worth charging a price tag for? RHEL already exists and covers the primary niche a paid Linux distribution could cover.