You are already paying a subscription for an OS. How old is your computer, 4 years-5 years old? Take $200 (cost of OS) and it's $40 or $50 a year or $3-4 dollars a month. Same applies for Apple Mac OS you just pay the $200 in the price of the $2,000 computure.

That's not a subscription, that's amortization.

The critical difference is that amortization decreases your cost per unit time with use. More use, better value.

Subscriptions do not work that way. Having to pay $50/year for a 5 year old laptop doesn't excite.

That's an oversimplification because it requires the utility of the device to be maintained over it's operational life. Routinely the utility of the device changes as new features are added or removed during OS upgrades, support for software, and eventually hardware support is dropped entirely. It doesn't matter if the hardware is still functional.

This isn't even necessarily in the vendor's control. For example, Google Chrome just stopped loading TLS encrypted sites on my partner's MacBook this past week and displays a lovely pink banner over every tab saying the OS is no longer supported.

Companies are not held to any standards for support and the amount of support they give varies based on the product. Apple has provided decades of support for some products but considerably less for others because they shared an architecture or platform that was eventually dropped. Google is notorious for just dropped support for products on a whim.

And subscriptions won't fix this problem.

The problem with Amortization in the consumer space is the lifetime of the device. Sure, you can keep running a computer for year 6 instead of the standard 5 years...but 90% of consumers don't - What machines from 2016 are you using today? If you do, let's get serious you're already looking to upgrade in the near future, no?

I agree no one uses devices for long. But as a pedantic N=1... I use a computer from around 2011-13.. can't quite remember. Added a stick of RAM(it came with 4gb), and changed the HDD to an SDD, and had to replace the coin cell battery in the nvram once, all told for <10000INR. So it's the original cost + 10000INR for something that works perfectly well today, after 10+ years ;)

So yes, we exist too.

But, no complaints, linux windows all of it work flawlessly.

Me? None. I give them to my mom.

> What machines from 2016 are you using today?

Most of my machines are that old or older.

> If you do, let's get serious you're already looking to upgrade in the near future, no?

No. I only look to upgrade if the system stop working or if it can no longer perform as I need it to.

What? Say you bought some pants last year for $60. Do you think you paid a $5/month subscription for that? What have you ever purchased that's not a subscription then?

Well, I actually had to take those $60 as a 12-month loan, so I've paid $7/month for a year...

Thats a very positive and forgiving perspective on subscription fees!

Better chose another distro,

https://ubuntu.com/pro/subscribe

You can't be serious. This is a subscription of an entirely different kind, and most certainly will not be too useful for most people. So long you run an LTS release, you get a stable target that will remain stable and supported by security updates for 5 years. For free.

The presence of a paid version doesn't negate the free version.

I refuse to use windows 11, there's no positive reason for updating from windows 10. I'm with you.

What Linux needs is a easier cross over layer.. Less loke dual boot and more vm alt tab into and out..

Microsoft could create this. They have no reason to.

Nobody else could, because it would require Microsoft to agree to something that's against their interests.

Isn't that WSL though ?

no, it's reverse WSL.

LSW, if you will.

The problem is, in a capitalist world even libre/open source needs money to live. A race to thr cheapest is a loss for everyone in that kind of society. No OS is ever "done", there is always maintenance, security updates, ...

I don't think that he was talking about not paying for software. I think he was talking about not renting software.

Yes but what is the right price for a one-time payment of software ? If you're going to use maintenance, updates, all the work that comes after you paid, what do you consider is a correct price to pay in advance for all future changes ?

The "correct price" depends entirely on the specific software, so this is an impossible question to answer in its literal sense.

> what do you consider is a correct price to pay in advance for all future changes ?

You don't. Outside of security updates, which should never be charged for, you pay for the software as it exists when you buy it. When future changes come around, you buy the upgrade (if you want it).

It's the tried-and-true method of charging for this stuff.

We're specifically talking about an OS here, so the scope is not really the same, but still: are you ok with no package updates ? No update to the documentation, the wiki, and stuff like that ? No forum or chat ?

>Outside of security updates, which should never be charged for

Why shouldn't you be charged for for security updates?

>I refuse to pay a subscription for an OS, that should be pay once and be done paying.

Sure

But don't expect to get any updates to what you paid for - after all, updates are no longer the same OS

There's a decent OS called MacOS that's somehow always free on major new releases...

It is bundled with hardware. I cannot afford it, I would rather go with Linux in my humble opinion.

I'd advise Debian over Ubuntu because Ubuntu is lately also similar forced bs by forcing snaps.