Linux is free if your time is worthless
• 155 words • 1 min
One of my favorite old Linux jokes is, “Linux is free… if your time is worthless.” This quote is possibly adapted from a jwz interview dating back to 1998. In it, he said:
I think Linux is a great thing, because Linux is an alternative to [major operating systems], and because, of all the operating systems that are at all relevant today, Unix is the best of a bad lot. […] As we all know, Linux is only free if your time has no value, and I find that my time is better spent doing things other than the endless moving-target-upgrade dance.
Snark aside, that’s a good read.
Ever since “Cloud Native” became mainstream, developer userspace tools became more valuable than whatever OS flavour you choose to run. So pick whichever you like, work hard, and have fun.
And yes, 2025 is finally the year of the linux desktop1.
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Or is it? ↩︎