Will Apple match Windows' free OS upgrades?

[Sunnz]

What about Red Hat, Novell/SUSE, Mandriva, TerraSoft (Yellow Dog Linux), Linspire, Canonical (*buntu), etc.? Those are all companies that are willing to support their versions of Linux. As for the more "non-commercial" distros, the support is out there on the Internet. It's not as elegant as having a company to support you, but you might get the answer sooner all with a simple Google search.

While that's true, I was referring how other people saying that company don't just develop new software and give it away for free... but that's exactly how Linux works, they keep making new things and gives everything for free. (as in freedom and almost like free beer!!)

 

[nixgeek]

While that's true, I was referring how other people saying that company don't just develop new software and give it away for free... but that's exactly how Linux works, they keep making new things and gives everything for free. (as in freedom and almost like free beer!!)

I'm with you on that. Although I do have to admit that most Linux distributions still have some way to go to make things accessible for the end desktop user, a lot of them are quite usable and provide pretty much everything that an end user could want. It's just a matter of getting used to the environment, just like it is an adjustment for Windows users moving to the Mac (although probably much more elegant when going from Windows to Mac OS X).

 

[Viro]

How much code does RedHat actually contribute to their Linux distribution? Replace RedHat with Novell/Ubuntu/Debian/$FAV_DISTRO and you still get the same answer.

None of them are like Microsoft or Apple, who bear the brunt of software development. As such, they are much more able to 'give it away' since they didn't invest as much into it in the first place.

 

[Sunnz]

AFAIK, they each contribute in different ways.

RPM and Aiglx from Red Hat, XGL from Novell, can't give enought kudos from the free and nice CDs from Ubuntu, Debian is more of GNU spirite, and not to forget Portage from Gentoo, my favourite software so far!!!