>Lets say my time is billed at about $50/month, which is low for a software engineer. Now lets say a Linux desktop/laptop requires 5 hours of system admin time

>Lets say my time is billed at about $50/month, which is low for a software engineer. Now lets say a Linux desktop/laptop requires 5 hours of system admin time per month to troubleshoot drivers, upgrades, etc. That means a Linux desktop/laptop costs $250/month. For that price I could buy a new Mac every 10-12 months. I have a Mac right now and spend less than 30 minutes per month futzing around with it, so it's far cheaper. Or you can just buy from a GNU and/or Linux vendor that supports their own hardware and distro and get the same benefits. (System76, Purism, etc) >Telling busier, poorer, or older people with families they should set up their own servers or run their own Linux systems is sort of a "why do they not eat cake?" attitude. Why? When it comes to servers the actual alternative there is either telling them to buy a Windows server, or start paying cloud providers, neither of which really have a lower money/time investment in all cases when you get into it. This is assuming that the reason someone wants to have their own server is to have a home business. (And if you're on the cloud there's a good chance you'll end up running Linux there anyway)