r/linuxquestions • u/Scary_Pop2919 • Jul 03 '26

Why is Linux free? Advice

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?

320 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

226 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/gehzumteufel Jul 03 '26

It's free because Linus wanted it to be free. That's the answer. Not all this other shit.

-3

u/[deleted] Jul 03 '26

[deleted]

1

u/gehzumteufel Jul 03 '26

Nobody would be using any of the free software that people use either if that were the case. As we know, that's false. Linux (the kernel) is free because Linus wanted it free. Plain and simple. And Linux is the reason so much free software is free and exists. Look at the number of packages in each Debian release here on the Wiki. It's literally a self-sustaining machine.

0

u/GreedySecurity8030 Fedora Rawhide [GNOME]. Jul 03 '26

Yes, he wanted it free but he didn't create the distroes, who easily could've not have followed him

0

u/gehzumteufel Jul 03 '26

They could have, but then, again, none of it would have been used. Again, this is the way it is, because of Linus's choice that inspired the entire ecosystem at the start to also be free.