Linux only has zero cost if you consider the time you spend on it has no value
I don’t have much money, but have time to research and make things I need work well.
Even though I can’t donate financially, I can still pay it forward by submitting bug reports and helping out with support on forums
I tried Linux back in the day, when it was only theoretically free. Realistically, on a 9600 baud modem, it would have taken a week and a half to download it. The only practical way to get Linux, or BSD at that time was by purchasing CDs from Walnut Creek.
You could go to Micro Center and choose any distro that you wanted, so long as it was either Red Hat, Slackware, or FreeBSD. You could purchase the whole shootin’ match and it would have still been cheaper than a single Windows license. Those were the days!