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Comment by mhaberl | Hacker News Reader

I don't think that (most) Linux users see "free" as the main reason for using Linux.

Personally if Linux had a price tag, and Windows were free I would still be a Linux user.

That is true. If I put it into monetary terms, I would gladly pay 50 EUR per month to have an operating system that did the following:

- UNIX command line integration and generally following UNIX philosophy

- Docker integration working out of the box

- no spying on me

- fractional scaling support

- Nvidia drivers support (for gaming)

Running Windows 10, Ubuntu 20.04, Mac OS Mojave and Mac OS Catalina on different computers because of reasons and all of them lack something.

I'd pay $250 or $1000 for just using Arch month by month. Bear in mind I actually do, I donate $1200 plus to "Linux" or open source in general, per month, because I like it so much.

Haphazardly donating ~~ $1200 per month, and many times; more, but that's about it. It's a donate system I know this, put your money where your hearts is or are. Which could be anywhere. But that's my plan and in retrospects. Donate people, support whatever you want, whether it's Candy Crush for windows 8 or some other projects. I do. And have done. It's been going on for 14 years now. Donate people. Where you want to see either changes or stability.

I'd rather have the Nvidia support for ML. But more importantly, the OS would need to support a multi-touch trackpad and the Adobe suite.

Sure they do, otherwise selling desktop software to Linux users would actually be profitable.

Selling desktop software to Linux users is only unprofitable because it often sucks and when it doesn't the market share isn't there. Have you ever seen anyone actually pay for Windows or Mac OS? No? right.

macOS is free and has been for a long time, though obviously there are issues with getting it running on non-Apple hardware.

Most people do purchase Windows, it's just that the license is included in their hardware purchase.

I don't count that as purchasing Windows. In the same way the cost of Linux support for my computer is included in the hardware purchase because AMD paid engineers to write drivers.

I'd count consciously giving money for a license as paying for the license, because the argument is about the attitude.

I didn't know macOS license allowed you to install it on anything other than a Mac.

Plenty of times actually, that is why they sell Windows OEM CDs and macOS used to be sold on stores as well.

They basically sold recovery keys.

As far as Windows, 95% of the people I know pirated Windows. The only people that buy windows are enterprises.

Windows has been being sold in boxes since early 90s, 30 years long by now, and while rampant in some countries, not every country is/was a piracy dream.

The kind of people that need to buy Windows (ie, those that build their own computers) are the kind of people that either pirate it or buy illegally sourced volume keys for 3$.

Keep telling that to yourself.

That's a chicken and egg problem and has nothing to do with Linux users being cheap. It has more to do with nobody actually using Linux on the desktop. Why would you devote a ton of dev time to supporting a platform with "dozens of us!"?

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