

Ask HN: Would you pay for Linux? - VierScar

I&#x27;ve been tossing up the idea of a modern, developer-friendly distro with a nice UI, simple file hierarchy and good package management.  Linux is built around being open, and almost all distro&#x27;s are free (as in beer), so this might be an unusual thing to ask, but..<p>Would you pay for a Linux distro?<p>If so, what would you want to see in that distro? If not, why not?
======
Morphling
As Linux currently is answer would be: No! There are a lot things that are
extremely wonky on Linux and few things that works extremely well, but for me
positives don't out weight negatives on a desktop thou.

Would I ever pay for Linux distro? Quite possibly, but only if the software
capabilities on the platform catches up with the competitors, for one I like
playing games on my PC and as it currently stands I get sever performance
losses and tons of graphical glitches which is a driver problem and as such
not so much a distribution problem.

As for now I will continue running Linux on my laptop and servers, but my
desktop will stay Windows for the foreseeable future.

------
mfenniak
I think it'd be a hard sell. You'd need to find some real, concrete pain
points that people suffer from, and then address them, and then market it
towards people suffering from those issues.

I'm a desktop Linux user (Mint), and I find it to be quite developer-friendly,
and it has a nice UI, and Debian has the best package management. So,
personally, I'm not sold yet. :-)

~~~
VierScar
Thanks :) I know I'll be burned for this but, my thought was to make it more
Mac OSX-like. With a similar File Hierarchy (the Unix one seems over-
complicated for its use).

A nice UI (similar to Unity), a for-profit app store, and drop support for
32-bit, and every other platform, except 64-bit and ARM, I hate so much
backwards-compatibility like being able to run DOS on Windows 8 - I mean
really?

I had a bunch of other ideas too, but these are all mainly behind-the-scenes
work, no "concrete pain points" unfortunately I think.

------
Ynot_82
I don't think many people would pay for Free software (especially if you're
targeting this toward developers)

But many would pay for services.

\- First class 24/7 phone support.

\- Pre-configured vertical software stacks (Eg. out the box VoIP server, or
whatever)

\- Option of off-site hosting.

~~~
VierScar
I should have clarified, sorry - I intended on making it a developer-friendly
desktop distro.

Also could you explain off-site hosting?

~~~
Ynot_82
> Also could you explain off-site hosting?

Customers who don't want the hassle of having their own hardware.

You provide the hardware (in a datacentre) and rent out usage.

------
dagw
I wouldn't pay for a Linux distro in isolation, but I would pay for a Linux
distro guaranteed to work 100% out of the box on my laptop, backed up with
support.

