Free vs. Not

[ShadowZERO]

Hi, i was wondering if anyone could give me an idea of what the benefit of paying for a Linux distro would be. I tried Linux Mint and now i never want to boot Windows again... but i'm noticing certain things that seem to be limitations of the fact that there's no steady income for the people who develop the distro. Some things seem incomplete or unstable, and I want to know if a pay distro would be better in that respect, so i could completely ditch windows more seamlessly. Specifically, i was eying Linspire, and looking for comparisons between that and the full-featured free distros like Mint and PCLinuxOS. Thx for input!

 

[Nothinman]

Not really, usually what you get when you pay for a distro is support since they all use virtually the same software. Some will include some extra proprietary software when you pay for it but it's usually crap and causes more problems than it's worth. If you want to help Linux progress get involved some how and help a project out.

 

[cleverhandle]

Like Nothinman said, all you're generally paying for is support. Any actual software specific to the distro is usually useless at best. And, IMO, the support is almost never worth it - you'll get much better "support" by using a distro with a large userbase and active online communities. For any given problem or configuration, you'll probably find 5 HowTo's or forum threads for Ubuntu for every one that you find for Linspire.

 

[nweaver]

linspire is one of the WORST linux distros you can find.

As cleverhandle stated, using one with a large userbase>paying for support for the most part. Even if you don't use it, Gentoo has a fantastic user community, and due to the...unique problems associated with compiling EVERYTHING from source, they have seen almost any problem you can imagine. Gentoo forums are great for finding answers to obscure questions. Ubuntu has almost anything else you want already posted/solved in their forums too.

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: nweaver
Even if you don't use it, Gentoo has a fantastic user community, and due to the...unique problems associated with compiling EVERYTHING from source, they have seen almost any problem you can imagine. Gentoo forums are great for finding answers to obscure questions.

I agree. The documentation is the best thing to come out of the project IMO.

Ubuntu has almost anything else you want already posted/solved in their forums too.

To be fair, I should note that I hate the Ubuntu forums, due to the preponderance of enthusiastic, well-intentioned, but clueless newbies. I've seen way too many threads there where an OP's question generates "solutions" that are just patently incorrect to an experienced user. Or where the OP gets no solution but instead gets two pages of "me too" posts, of which only half are actually the same problem as was described. HowTo's and such targetted at Ubuntu are fine, because by that time the author has worked out any confusion, but I'd advise new users to take posts on the Ubuntu forum with a healthy grain of salt. Or better yet, to ask questions here.

Personally, I prefer Debian's userbase. They're grouchy old coots, but they know what they're doing.

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: cleverhandle

Originally posted by: nweaver
Even if you don't use it, Gentoo has a fantastic user community, and due to the...unique problems associated with compiling EVERYTHING from source, they have seen almost any problem you can imagine. Gentoo forums are great for finding answers to obscure questions.

I agree. The documentation is the best thing to come out of the project IMO.

Ubuntu has almost anything else you want already posted/solved in their forums too.

To be fair, I should note that I hate the Ubuntu forums, due to the preponderance of enthusiastic, well-intentioned, but clueless newbies. I've seen way too many threads there where an OP's question generates "solutions" that are just patently incorrect to an experienced user. Or where the OP gets no solution but instead gets two pages of "me too" posts, of which only half are actually the same problem as was described. HowTo's and such targetted at Ubuntu are fine, because by that time the author has worked out any confusion, but I'd advise new users to take posts on the Ubuntu forum with a healthy grain of salt. Or better yet, to ask questions here.

Personally, I prefer Debian's userbase. They're grouchy old coots, but they know what they're doing.

just don't let the "U" word slip out when talking to them

 

[Nothinman]

just don't let the "U" word slip out when talking to them

Yea, we hate it when people don't spell out the word "you"...

 

[Fox5]

Maybe he meant Unix?

Oh, and pay distros generally suck. Go for the distros with the largest user base, which right now are ubuntu or pclivelinux I believe. (at least they're the fastest growing at any rate)

 

[Nothinman]

Maybe he meant Unix?

I was being facetious cause I'm pretty sure he meant Ubuntu...

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Maybe he meant Unix?

I was being facetious cause I'm pretty sure he meant Ubuntu...

I thought he meant unibrow, since they all have one

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: cleverhandle

Originally posted by: nweaver
Even if you don't use it, Gentoo has a fantastic user community, and due to the...unique problems associated with compiling EVERYTHING from source, they have seen almost any problem you can imagine. Gentoo forums are great for finding answers to obscure questions.

I agree. The documentation is the best thing to come out of the project IMO.

Ubuntu has almost anything else you want already posted/solved in their forums too.

To be fair, I should note that I hate the Ubuntu forums, due to the preponderance of enthusiastic, well-intentioned, but clueless newbies. I've seen way too many threads there where an OP's question generates "solutions" that are just patently incorrect to an experienced user. Or where the OP gets no solution but instead gets two pages of "me too" posts, of which only half are actually the same problem as was described. HowTo's and such targetted at Ubuntu are fine, because by that time the author has worked out any confusion, but I'd advise new users to take posts on the Ubuntu forum with a healthy grain of salt. Or better yet, to ask questions here.

Personally, I prefer Debian's userbase. They're grouchy old coots, but they know what they're doing.

That is true, I frequent Ubuntu forums in spurts and it is aggravating when you post a simple solution that you've used yourself many times (or seen someone else has posted an accurate solution) but it just gets lost in the flood of newbies who don't understand the question what they think they are talking about.

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Maybe he meant Unix?

I was being facetious cause I'm pretty sure he meant Ubuntu...

just for kicks, go into #Debian and start asking for help with a problem. About half way through, mention this is on Ubuntu.

 

[Cogman]

If you really want to pay for something, I hear SuSe is supposed to be good. But as others have said, your just buying Support and not an OS. According to the GPL every linux OS has to be distributed freely, but tech support and company developed software can be sold.

 

[xSauronx]

Originally posted by: nweaver

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Maybe he meant Unix?

I was being facetious cause I'm pretty sure he meant Ubuntu...

just for kicks, go into #Debian and start asking for help with a problem. About half way through, mention this is on Ubuntu.

you have a strange, strange way of getting your kicks.

/might give it a shot

 

[nubian1]

There is really no advantage to paying for a Distro unless you absolutely have to have phone support. For a medium to advanced PC user linux these days isn't much to grasp anymore.

For an experiment I installed PCLinuxOS 2007 on one of my PC's that I setup at my girlfriend's place. Her PC needs are pretty much average including surfing, email, putzing around with her digital camera & ipod, ect.

I gave her a very brief rundown of the applications, different names vs some windows ones, but she was already familliar with Firefox ect.

To date I have had only one call, in over 4 months, & when I called back she had solved the issue herself. It wasn't really an issue, she just wanted to confirm if her digital camera was going to be recognized which it was using DigiKam.

Choosing a free distro also opens up more distribution choices btw.

 

[cheesehead]

Having mucked about with Mepis, tried Debian, absolutely failed at Zenwalk, and decided that anything even remotely related to Slackware is insane, I'm a staunch supporter of Ubuntu. Yes, the newbie horde can sometimes make getting help tricky, but nine times out of ten, you can just search the forums and find a solution. And if you can't, just head over to your local Linux User Group - a far better solution than a forum or IRC chatroom for learning Linux.

 

[nweaver]

negative, IRC is THE place for help with linux. maybe not #Ubuntu, but #debian, #apache, etc

 

[Freze]

I like openSUSE... It is a matter of personal choice though. My friend was converting someone to Linux after a HDD failure and only had a Fedora 7 DVD nearby, and although he configured it and gave some basic training, I understand that Fedora was ok (and I believe Fedora is not considered a newbie friendly distro). Later he came and installed Freespire, which I understand is a good transition distro, for the transition between Windows and Linux, and now he is an openSUSE user... try a few, I believe you will find one or 2 (or more) to your liking, and then just choose (the hardest part)