It is, but you have to consider that a lot of these payments not only go to support (tech support, that is) but also to financially supporting developers of open source software who would otherwise be unable to support themselves.
I’m not saying there shouldn’t be a cheaper option but you have to consider how far your money is going. (IMO, it’s going much farther than if you pay for a proprietary software and support plan)
I started using Linux in end of the 90’s, still with floppy disks. Nowadays I have almost no problems with Linux in general, but the early days were full of problems, bad documentation, compatibility issues and so on. Not that these things are not around anymore, but it’s way easier now.
Anyway, I would never get into Linux if I had to pay for it.
Well…People obviously don’t have an issue paying money to run very limited software/hardware like on Macbooks and Surface tablets. We can extend that to phones.
Is it simply because of marketing? Or because people don’t know the alternative? Or because people don’t care? Or is it because of reasons (other than those) that actually merit consideration? Could one of those reasons be that privacy is dead the moment you connect to the net, so why sacrifice convenience when you never even have privacy in the first place? Is that a statement worth considering? If you are always recorded by the ISP anyways, why do/should I/we/you care about giving some of that data to Microsoft, and Google, and Apple? At least we get stuff that is actually useful, like GMaps, or w/e. I can see how 5/10 privacy is better than 1/10, but…yeah. I dunno. My thoughts are scattered.
What has been seen cannot be unseen. Once you know your OS is recording all the things you have and do on your PC, you automatically feel like you just don’t want to use the computer for anything serious, despite the drawbacks of the alternatives. This is what I feel personally. This also links well with the idea that I proposed a while back that considering these issues with Windows, a PC built for gaming today is basically an overpriced console with no bang for buck, since most common tasks outside of gaming should not be done on the windows spyware platform.
Now this is an interesting question. For me, I’m willing to pay more for hardware that comes with Linux. Generally you have to, as Linux doesn’t come “subsidized with extra software,” (read: bundled with crapware). I build my own desktops, but for laptops it’s System76 or bust. I might be doing servers through them in the near future.
I’m meaning anything that would require a third party license. Though, upon further investigation, I am beginning to wonder if that’s the case anymore. What you are getting is either a support contract or you are getting the knowledge that RHEL is put together by industry professionals who are looking to make sure your systems stay up and running short of any act of God.
In the before times, it was for licenses for audio/video codecs, or other licensed software.