this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2026
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Ubuntu Pro is free for personal use on up to five machines.
Also note that Universe is the community-maintained repository, sort of like the AUR but the community also reviews package creations. The Main repository is maintained by the Ubuntu Project and has always had free security updates.
If you're not paying for the product, you are the product.
Debian is free for any use for an unlimited number of machines without corporate tracking which packages you install.
Client-side data collection is opt-in and open-source: https://www.zdnet.com/article/canonicals-ubuntu-telemetry/ If you're talking server-side collection we don't know about, I'd call for burden of proof since neither Ubuntu nor Debian have relevant history of collection and that would probably violate the Privacy Policy.
You need to log in to use Ubuntu Pro. Obviously.
that doesn't really change what I've said
So I guess with Debian, you are the product.
Debian is a community, not a product.
Interesting. I can use a community for my OS? So every time I hear someone say "install debian", they're telling me to install a community?
Either way, it's free, so I'm still the product.
it's free, because people have decided to come together and volunteer to create something that is beneficial to them, allows them to express themselves, and distribute it for free to better other people's lives and contribute to human existence. Part of their motivation to create such a thing is to not have the users be the product.
When there is a soup kitchen for homeless people, the homeless people are not a product.
alex is comparing Ubuntu Pro to the soup kitchen
I was told if something is free then you are the product. Please try to keep up.
It's okay if you don't follow my point, you can ask.
I think you've taken my comment in the opposite direction of what I've intended and being a little grumpy as a result.
The Internet hard at work. Text is a difficult medium.<3
Oh. So the assertion that was made about if something is free then you are the product - I guess that's not always true, eh?
yes. volunteering, creative works based on self actualization and need are things that exist, and are seperate to organizations with investors expecting a monetary return, yet somehow accept no money for the services they offer.
Another such institution would be a public library. The end goal of such institutions are to increase knowledge/capabilities of the local community. The "you are a product" part of it works in a kind of "non-zero sum game" like outcome where if you give resources to a community, the increase in skills of the community gives you a bigger return or less losses eventually, compared to if you let that community wallow in misery and deprivation. (Crime goes down, employment goes up, thus money within community increases, taxes are extracted from the community replacing the amount spent making the public resource. As a result of decreased crime/anti-social/maladaptive behaviours, the community has lesser public costs associated with them).
Thus, you get more programmers that know what the fuck they are doing, you have an operating system you couldn't have made by yourself, etc etc.
EDIT : It's one of the problems of thinking about things "normally"; you assume things are zero sum, that is, if I have an apple, and give it to someone else, I have no apple! but it's more, If I give him some surplus wood, and he gives me some surplus nails, we can both have tables that we could not have before, which is worth more than the wood I gave him.
Your disagreement is not with me but the one asserting that we are the product anytime sometime is free.
IDK man, this part of the thread is full of so many layers of irony, devil's advocates and kitchen sinks that I'm lost in the sauce and contributing to the discussion with my own viewpoints so that some people can learn something.
Debian is a community.
Debian GNU/Linux is a non-commercial Linux distribution, ergo not a product.
Well, I was just corrected by someone taking time out of their day to tell me it's a community, not an OS.
I've installed Debian before, so I thought perhaps I was mistaken.
Context is really critical here.
I thought Debian was a community. How are you installing a community on computers?