5 ms·

Ubuntu Pro subscription – should you pay to use Linux?

15 points by ottoke 8mo ago

pjmlp 8mo ago
Contrary to Betteridge's law of headlines, I would assert yes, and that is also the answer on the article for the TL;DR; folks out there. Otherwise don't whine when projects die.
- pestatije 8mo ago
  id pay for rhel
breezykoi 8mo ago
Paying makes sense when you actually need/use those services. Paying "because you can" feels wrong to me. If the goal is to support FOSS, there are many more ways to contribute than subscribing to a service you don't use.
- ForHackernews 8mo ago
  Without commenting on Ubuntu Pro specifically, the whole point of a Linux distribution is that users don't need to know or care what specific services they use. I'd happily pay $50/year to use "Debian" and trust that the Debian Foundation figures out how to feed that money back to the appropriate upstream projects. Please don't try and make me give $0.05/week to dbus maintainers or whoever.
willtemperley 8mo ago
I would happily pay for Linux if it came pre-installed on a machine it's guaranteed to work with. I mean flawlessly - I really don't want to configure a driver ever again. Please someone create a linux laptop that: 1. Just works out of the box. 2. Has really good keychain management. 3. Comes with no bundled AI. 4. Good clipboard managment (like Handoff). 5. Excellent graphics APIs and an good UI framework. Apple and Microsoft have lost the plot and there's a gaping wide space to fill here.
- adithyassekhar 8mo ago
  Sadly people can't do much with an OS that doesn't run the applications they want. Until that becomes a reality no one is paying for Linux.
  - willtemperley 8mo ago
    Gaming works well on Linux, probably because people pay for games. There's already tons of power software for Linux (e.g. Blender) but it's not always easy to use. I don't see why the App Store model wouldn't work on Linux too.
    - dm319 8mo ago
      Given how well windows games now run on linux through proton, it just made me think - surely, Outlook/Word etc should run easily? That would be strange firing up Word from Steam though. Companies seem completely dependent on the Word/Outlook ecosystem. I hope this will change in the future, and not just for some other US tech oligopoly.
      - Spivak 8mo ago
        Which is crazy because Outlook the actual application has got to be one of the worst email clients in existence. The only email client that I've dealt with that had more problems was the one guy who insisted on still using pine.
      - krater23 8mo ago
        M$ is doing all to press them into cloud services and browser based usage of this tools. So, just wait some years and this is not a issue anymore.
  - SahAssar 8mo ago
    I think for most people the apps either have equivalent web versions (because they are already electron/similar on OSX/Win) or have linux native versions (basically all software engineering tools like IDE:s, compilers). Sure, there are professions where that is not true (adobe, xcode, etc.), but I think most people on this forum could switch to linux without problems.
JohnFen 8mo ago
For me, the immediate question isn't "should I pay to use Linux" (I already do). This is a nonstarter for me simply because I don't do software subscriptions, and especially not for operating systems. However, this appears to be aimed at enterprise usage rather than personal anyway.
egorfine 8mo ago
Paying to have rust slop and systemd-something shoved down my throat? No way.
rpigab 8mo ago
IMO, paying is the best alternative to getting ads everywhere or losing future support because the people making updates lose interest or go out of business.
estimator7292 8mo ago
Pay for linux, possibly. Pay Canonical for Linux, absolutely not. They're on my list of enshittifiers, who by definition should never be given any money in any form.
- dm319 8mo ago
  That seems unfair to me.
  - Grisu_FTP 8mo ago
    Well, i also would rather use Windows 11 than ubuntu. (I probably would also rather pay for Windows than ubuntu) Every time i tried to use ubuntu it was the worst OS/Linux experience i ever had. A friend wanted to try linux once, picked ubuntu because its a "noob friendly" distro, and i had a "critical system error" pop up before even booting up once. And this is by far the most stable experience i had with ubuntu. Also ubuntu is ugly and slow (In my experience, In my opinion).
jdboyd 8mo ago
It looks like the desktop/workstation price is $25/yr, which seems pretty reasonable. For personal users, it is free for 5 concurrent machines. Unfortunately the per server price is $500/yr, which maybe competitive with some of the competition, but still seems steep to me. But then, while I run Ubuntu VMs or containers, I'm not really using it for bare metal servers any more. For some comparisons, Proxmox is €370/yr/socket. RHEL Workstation is $196.90/yr, while server is $383.90/yr, and Oracle Linux is reportedly $1,199/socketpair/yr. Given the free distro, subscription support model that tends to prevail, a pay once price with either no free, or on top of the free option might be a hard sell.

15 points by ottoke 8mo ago

pjmlp 8mo ago

Contrary to Betteridge's law of headlines, I would assert yes, and that is also the answer on the article for the TL;DR; folks out there. Otherwise don't whine when projects die.

pestatije 8mo ago
id pay for rhel

breezykoi 8mo ago

Paying makes sense when you actually need/use those services. Paying "because you can" feels wrong to me. If the goal is to support FOSS, there are many more ways to contribute than subscribing to a service you don't use.

ForHackernews 8mo ago
Without commenting on Ubuntu Pro specifically, the whole point of a Linux distribution is that users don't need to know or care what specific services they use. I'd happily pay $50/year to use "Debian" and trust that the Debian Foundation figures out how to feed that money back to the appropriate upstream projects. Please don't try and make me give $0.05/week to dbus maintainers or whoever.

willtemperley 8mo ago

I would happily pay for Linux if it came pre-installed on a machine it's guaranteed to work with. I mean flawlessly - I really don't want to configure a driver ever again. Please someone create a linux laptop that: 1. Just works out of the box. 2. Has really good keychain management. 3. Comes with no bundled AI. 4. Good clipboard managment (like Handoff). 5. Excellent graphics APIs and an good UI framework. Apple and Microsoft have lost the plot and there's a gaping wide space to fill here.

adithyassekhar 8mo ago
Sadly people can't do much with an OS that doesn't run the applications they want. Until that becomes a reality no one is paying for Linux.
- willtemperley 8mo ago
  Gaming works well on Linux, probably because people pay for games. There's already tons of power software for Linux (e.g. Blender) but it's not always easy to use. I don't see why the App Store model wouldn't work on Linux too.
  - dm319 8mo ago
    Given how well windows games now run on linux through proton, it just made me think - surely, Outlook/Word etc should run easily? That would be strange firing up Word from Steam though. Companies seem completely dependent on the Word/Outlook ecosystem. I hope this will change in the future, and not just for some other US tech oligopoly.
    - Spivak 8mo ago
      Which is crazy because Outlook the actual application has got to be one of the worst email clients in existence. The only email client that I've dealt with that had more problems was the one guy who insisted on still using pine.
    - krater23 8mo ago
      M$ is doing all to press them into cloud services and browser based usage of this tools. So, just wait some years and this is not a issue anymore.
- SahAssar 8mo ago
  I think for most people the apps either have equivalent web versions (because they are already electron/similar on OSX/Win) or have linux native versions (basically all software engineering tools like IDE:s, compilers). Sure, there are professions where that is not true (adobe, xcode, etc.), but I think most people on this forum could switch to linux without problems.

JohnFen 8mo ago

For me, the immediate question isn't "should I pay to use Linux" (I already do). This is a nonstarter for me simply because I don't do software subscriptions, and especially not for operating systems. However, this appears to be aimed at enterprise usage rather than personal anyway.

egorfine 8mo ago

Paying to have rust slop and systemd-something shoved down my throat? No way.

rpigab 8mo ago

IMO, paying is the best alternative to getting ads everywhere or losing future support because the people making updates lose interest or go out of business.

estimator7292 8mo ago

Pay for linux, possibly. Pay Canonical for Linux, absolutely not. They're on my list of enshittifiers, who by definition should never be given any money in any form.

dm319 8mo ago
That seems unfair to me.
- Grisu_FTP 8mo ago
  Well, i also would rather use Windows 11 than ubuntu. (I probably would also rather pay for Windows than ubuntu) Every time i tried to use ubuntu it was the worst OS/Linux experience i ever had. A friend wanted to try linux once, picked ubuntu because its a "noob friendly" distro, and i had a "critical system error" pop up before even booting up once. And this is by far the most stable experience i had with ubuntu. Also ubuntu is ugly and slow (In my experience, In my opinion).

jdboyd 8mo ago

It looks like the desktop/workstation price is $25/yr, which seems pretty reasonable. For personal users, it is free for 5 concurrent machines. Unfortunately the per server price is $500/yr, which maybe competitive with some of the competition, but still seems steep to me. But then, while I run Ubuntu VMs or containers, I'm not really using it for bare metal servers any more. For some comparisons, Proxmox is €370/yr/socket. RHEL Workstation is $196.90/yr, while server is $383.90/yr, and Oracle Linux is reportedly $1,199/socketpair/yr. Given the free distro, subscription support model that tends to prevail, a pay once price with either no free, or on top of the free option might be a hard sell.