How do Linux vendors make money?

If you have the expertise in-house, there's no problem doing this at all. Solaris, CentOS, FreeBSD are free to use, but if you want support past the manual, online documentation or online mailing lists/support forums, you pay. :)

Not to mention that the expertise in house isn't going to come cheap. It may actually be more cost effecient to pay the support costs.
 
A lot of the larger company's will pay good money for support contracts just so they have someone else to blame

An Executive Decision(tm)..
Lol - so true
My company thinks its a good idea moving some of its services from rackspace to internally hosted, which is not much of a problem in its self except they will not buy a server but expect it to go on a desktop with no fallover.
A desktop will now power a service we have charged clients a considerable amount of money for.

I'm glad i'm on the lookout for a new job
 
it's like Cars often the manufacturer makes a loss on the car and gets it's money from parts and servicing.
 
It's come on leaps and bounds in the last few years, but compared to OSX and Windows lags far behind in usability and overall experience.

With respect (read: Please don't ban me for arguing the toss :) ), it really doesn't. From installation to every single application I can think off, less gaming, Linux is as easy to use if not easier than Windows. The installation of applications alone with apt-get or synaptic is a joy! No viruses, so no need for intrusive or resource hogging AV apps.

It can be customised to look as nice as Windows or OSX.

I'm a bit of a convert, sorry! :)
 
Its true, if you wear a Tux t-shirt into a pub they have to give you a free drink. Thats the law.

If they dont give it to you ask for it again but say sudo first :D

*gets coat*

If you do su - sudo they will buy you drinks till you log out again.... :cool:
 
It's come on leaps and bounds in the last few years, but compared to OSX and Windows lags far behind in usability and overall experience.

I'd have to disagree there mate, most people use their PC for what? Browsing, Email, Word Processing? For this use there's no reason to use a far more bloated OS (Windows) or spend way to much on another (OSX) when you can use one that would do the tasks perfectly, for free. It's even possible to do more with Linux, but that's when it gets a bit iffy. Why i dual boot Mint and 7...
 
"Perfectly usable" is a point of view.

If you got by with Windows 95 or even 3.11 then something like Ubuntu seems perfectly usable even compared to Windows XP/Vista/7.

If on the other hand you are used to lots of hand holding or one of these people who doesn't keep their computer organised then Ubuntu seems alien.

Edit:

I got by with Windows 95
 
Having trialled Mint 7, Ububtu 9.04, Opensolaris and Now the new Mandriva beta, I have to say that Mandriva is so straight forward that my wife has no issues with it at all. The only problems that can crop up are for peripherals, but that is not really a Linux issue, more a lack of hardware vendor support.

I do run virtualbox and XP for my poker client thougH.
 
I happen to know that Clem - the lead developer on Mint - has taken 3 months off work to slave over Mint 8. Needless to say how damn good this release is going to be it just goes to show that he actually has a job :p
 
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