Ubuntu Pro subscription – should you pay to use Linux? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ubuntu Pro subscription – should you pay to use Linux?

#21

Post by krater23 » Mon, Jan 26, 2026, 5:29 PM UTC

dm319 wrote: post #18

willtemperley wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Ubuntu Pro subscription – should you pay to use Linux?

#22

Post by SahAssar » Mon, Jan 26, 2026, 5:38 PM UTC

adithyassekhar wrote: post #7

willtemperley wrote: post #6

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…

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.

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.

Re: Ubuntu Pro subscription – should you pay to use Linux?

#23

Post by jdboyd » Mon, Jan 26, 2026, 5:58 PM UTC

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.

Re: Ubuntu Pro subscription – should you pay to use Linux?

#24

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 26, 2026, 9:00 PM UTC

willtemperley wrote: post #10

rjh29 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great now multiply that bullet point list by 1000, because everyone wants different things and has different hardware, and you'll see that even the current state of Linux is a miracle. We're at the point where 90% of the time you can install a modern Gnome distro on a laptop and it'll work. Completely for free.

> everyone wants different things and has different hardware Did you read my post? > Please someone create a linux laptop That means the hardware is alreaty there. I'm talking about the macOS model for Linux. What would be top of your 5000 bullet point list?

[deleted]

Re: Ubuntu Pro subscription – should you pay to use Linux?

#25

Post by Grisu_FTP » Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 8:01 AM UTC

dm319 wrote: post #19

estimator7292 wrote: post #15

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.

That seems unfair to me.

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).