Linux has a price, it’s just not money
Linux has a price, it’s just not money
https://www.howtogeek.com/linux-has-a-price-its-just-not-money/
Publish Date: 2026-02-01 08:15:00
Source Domain: www.howtogeek.com
If you don’t have $100 (or more) for a standalone Windows license, then you can download any distro of Linux for free right now and have a working computer in just a few minutes. However, the cost of something can be measured in more than just dollar bills, and there are more than a few ways Linux ends up costing you more than a commercial operating system like Windows or macOS.
You pay with time before you save it
Credit: Lucas Gouveia/How-To Geek
Back in 1998, programmer Jamie Zawinski famously said, “…Linux is only free if your time has no value…” and that’s about as perfectly as anyone could have put it. If course, in the late ’90s, installing and configuring Linux was a nightmare. Maintaining it as a desktop operating system is only marginally less so.
We’ve come a long way since those days, and installing, configuring, and maintaining Linux is generally no harder than Windows. However, unless Linux is your first operating system, there is absolutely still a time debt when switching over. You have to learn new things, unlearn some old things, and it’s going to take time to settle into a daily-driver routine that works for you.
In the rare situation where something goes wrong troubleshooting can be more time-consuming as well, even if you’re quite savvy at fixing Windows issues. Linux has so many fundamental differences under the hood that not much transfers over. Once you’ve gotten over the…
