this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2026

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What do you mean it's not $139.00 for an OS? (media.piefed.world)

submitted 7 months ago by The_Picard_Maneuver@piefed.world to c/linuxmemes@lemmy.world

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[–] HeyJoe@lemmy.world 120 points 7 months ago (9 children)

Please, i never once paid for windows either.

[–] passepartout@feddit.org 101 points 7 months ago (9 children)

You paid the markup when buying hardware with OEM license though.

[–] IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works 55 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Not if I've never bought a prebuilt PC.

[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 points 7 months ago (6 children)

Not even a laptop?

[–] nialv7@lemmy.world 30 points 7 months ago

system76 let's go

[–] IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works 19 points 7 months ago

Nope. Never bothered with a laptop until work provided me with one.

[–] Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Cant say for them, but I've never owned a laptop until about 6 months ago, and thats used enterprise hardware off ebay.

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[–] wltr@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I owned only MacBooks and not pre-built PCs, so it’s the same for me. Never bought a single Windows license, even the OEM one.

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[–] antimidas@sopuli.xyz 9 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Yep, and not a small price at that. While the home license is not as expensive, it's still mid two digits. IIRC pro version typically costs around 100 € even as the bundled OEM license, especially if you're buying a laptop from a smaller manufacturer. That's the amount I remember the price going down if you drop windows licensing from a corporate laptop lease.

In any way it's not an insignificant price.

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[–] Alabaster_Mango@lemmy.ca 8 points 7 months ago (6 children)

You're forgetting piracy. I didn't buy any parts with OEM licenses. Granted I went grey market for my Windows 10 so I paid someone like $20.

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[–] muhyb@programming.dev 6 points 7 months ago

At least nowadays it's so much easier to find FreeDOS laptops. I remember that it was not a thing here 20 years ago, and Windows was included in the warranty so you couldn't remove it for at least 2 years (if you care about warranty).

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[–] Pudutr0n@lemmy.world 13 points 7 months ago (3 children)

I did and it was every bit as degrading as you might imagine.

[–] hansolo@lemmy.today 14 points 7 months ago (6 children)

Hey now, most of us didn't imagine that we were funding Bill Gates to go get an STI from Russian children. That adds a layer.

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[–] Shipgirlboy@sh.itjust.works 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Eh, whatever floats your boat, I say, no kink shaming

[–] Pudutr0n@lemmy.world 10 points 7 months ago

It didn't float my boat.

[–] The_Picard_Maneuver@piefed.world 6 points 7 months ago

Same... Multiple times.

[–] Aganim@lemmy.world 8 points 7 months ago

I paid for a ticket to the Windows 7 launch event back in the days. Cost a few euros, in return I got a day of talks, networking, a laptop bag full of sweets and a retail copy of Windows 7 Ultimate. The serial also worked for Windows 10 and 11, so I'd say that was a pretty sweet deal. I honestly cannot say if that technically counts as having paid for Windows though.

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[–] abbadon420@sh.itjust.works 71 points 7 months ago (5 children)

It's a trap. Once you accept linux, you will become a linux person. At every technical issue your friends and family encounter, you'll say stuff like "have you tried switching to linux?"

[–] The_Picard_Maneuver@piefed.world 59 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

It's too late...

[–] mushroommunk@lemmy.today 26 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Maybe if they stopped having issues Linux would fix.

Oh, Windows broke the printer driver? Yeah my Linux laptop still works. Can't turn your PC off? Yeah my Linux boots and shuts down fine still. Oh updates randomly restarting your PC in the middle of processing something? Yeah Linux let's you control updates.

I could go on.

[–] altkey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I became more aware of things breaking on Windows after switching at home. Everyday there is some weird bug or just very inconvinient behavior coming from Win, Office or platform-exclusive software. And with everything screwed to the floor and witholding information, you either find a sketchy workaround or wrap yourself around the issue. It's so weird, like I took a red pill. Linux quirks are challenges that I've chosen for myself, and there were several huge problems, but oh well going into windows is not a safe haven either, and that's a paid product and a standard OS for PCs.

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[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 11 points 7 months ago (2 children)

"Installing Arch is really easy these days!"

[–] IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I don't think I have anyone in my family that I hate quite that much.

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[–] ragas@lemmy.ml 5 points 7 months ago

I always say: Its Windows, I have no clue how that might work.

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[–] orenj@lemmy.sdf.org 38 points 7 months ago

GOD can you imagine paying 140 dollars for an ai generated OS with ads? could never be me

[–] NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world 32 points 7 months ago

Not only free, but private and secure. Won’t even spy on you, and if it tries you can just tell it no and it listens!

Fuck, I love Linux.

[–] abbiistabbii@piefed.blahaj.zone 24 points 7 months ago

Instead of an end user you shall have an ADMIN! NOT BEHOLDEN TO MICROSOFT BUT BEAUTIFUL AND TERRIBLE AS THE DAWN! POWERFUL AS THE SEA! ALL PROGRAMS WILL WORK FOR ME AND DESPAIR!

[–] teft@piefed.social 16 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I asked her for one desktop environment from her golden head. She gave me a handful.

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[+] GreenBeanMachine@lemmy.world 16 points 7 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (5 children)

[deleted]

[–] how_we_burned@lemmy.zip 5 points 7 months ago (12 children)

What shits me with Linux commands is they don't make sense.

Copy, diskpart, dir and so on make sense.

But Linux. Bah.

Cp, lsblk (sudo fdisk -l) and ls.

I know it's an a old dog thing but having used dos and windows command line for over 50 years it just makes me so frustrated to see Linux commands and their switches, syntax and parameters so obtusely obscure, purposeful, unnecessarily filled with complex jargon.

I write sql and python so I'm not unused to this sort of world but everytime I use Linux I find the command line, the supposedly masterful feature of the OS, just painfully, unnecessarily, poorly designed.

copying and pasting strange commands from strangers on old forum posts)

Yes exactly the only way to obtain the help is via weird forums where you waste hours reading posts from people trying to do basic shit. Half the time it's for the wrong distro, version or whatever bullshit problem you've got.

Like godforbid you want to mount a drive that won't mount in the GUI version of whatever kernal distro ver you end up getting.

You end up writing ridiculously long commands to do shit I can do in a handful of words that make sense in plain English.

Just shits me that MS is hellbent on enshitificating windows, forcing us to find alt.

What choice do we have anymore

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 10 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I mean, diskpart and dir don't make especially any more sense than lsblk/parted and ls. A fair point can be made for 'copy' being more intuitive, but 'diskpart' means you had to learn what disks and partitioning were, and lsblk means you need to learn what 'block' devices rae, and of course 'parted' references partitions. 'dir' means you wanted to 'show the directory' which means you had to learn of it as a directory, but then learn that the shortname of directory is the way to see the contents of a directory. ls means you learned you want to 'list' contents and that unix had this laziness of just the first and third letters of a word. Both involve learning, neither is 'intuitive'.

You end up writing ridiculously long commands

I assume this is the likes of dbus-send and crap, and I agree with you if that's the case. Dbus is a complication I could do without and have to confess that powershell cmdlets generally do a better job of instrumenting the system than a system that increasingly has no specific help and only long dbus-send commands to tackle certain things. dconf has issues too, but I think does a better job than the Windows registry at analagous function.

[–] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 7 points 7 months ago

I'm the same, but with windows.

People just don't like changing their ways.

Also you'll find out that linux is mostly much more logical than windows ever was.

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[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 11 points 7 months ago

Gotta love a free product that also does not suck.

[–] yesman@lemmy.world 11 points 7 months ago

To be honest: Windows has been free (for home users) for a while now. To be brutally honest: Most of the users who've abandoned Microslop did so with free plugged into the value proposition.

[–] somerandomperson@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 7 months ago

Free as in freedom AND beer :)

[–] bratorange@feddit.org 9 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Man I’m at the point where I would like to pay for a Linux distribution(ofc. under the assumption that source remains open) if that meant that someone was responsible for stuff working reliable. I hate my headphones not connecting via Bluetooth. I would like a consumer ready distribution and don’t want fiddle around with problems potentially everybody has to solve. Why do there have to 10000+ different package managers with 10000 different incomplete package sources?

[–] The_Picard_Maneuver@piefed.world 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I'm no expert, but I believe there are some distros with paid support (intended for corporate clients).

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 8 points 7 months ago

Yeah, SUSE, REL, Ubuntu have paid support. SUSE started as a service support company before spinning their own.

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[–] 474D@lemmy.world 6 points 7 months ago

Massgrave says it's actually $Free.99

[–] paequ2@lemmy.today 6 points 7 months ago

Macroslop Wangblows: pay $139 for OS, get locked in, don't learn anything, get abused, get exploited

Gigachad Linux: invest time, become smarter, become more independent, help fight enshittification, help your country's tech Independence, help the OS get better, help distribute real improvements to other users, etc

[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 5 points 7 months ago (3 children)

If something is free, then you're either the product, or the beta tester. But since paid software is getting worse and worse, being the beta tester is a good alternative.

[–] The_Picard_Maneuver@piefed.world 15 points 7 months ago (1 children)

And somehow in Windows they managed to make people pay for it and be the product.

[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 12 points 7 months ago

All while technically selling alpha versions...

[–] elucubra@sopuli.xyz 6 points 7 months ago

Microsoft has historically shipped Alpha versions, followed by Betas, in paid software.

[–] sobchak@programming.dev 6 points 7 months ago

In the case of Linux, especially the ones without a business built around them (e.g. Debian), they're more like mutual aid. They're not looking to sell it or exfiltrate your data in the future, after the "beta."

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