Is it safe to upgrade to paid version of a distro if I'm dual booting?
My primary OS is Windows (I use it for work) and I have Linux as my second OS. If I upgrade my linux distro to the paid version so I can have more features, will Windows be okay? Thanks I'm a newb
As others have said, there usually is no such thing, and if there is, your distro is probably practically a scam and you should find another.
What distro are you running?
Some legitimate distros may have extra support available for a cost, but that just means support, not extra features. Also, they sometimes have things like live patching, but that really is more an enterprise grade feature.
I'm using ZorinOS and I really like how simple it is and I want to support the project. If I upgrade to the Pro version then I get more desktop themes/options.
But I understand what you mean. I could just install for example Debian with KDE desktop and have more customizing options for free.
If you like Zorin and want to support it then just do it. Don’t let other people tell you to switch, more people should contribute.
ALL of the listed features from zorin pro have free alternatives, unless you really want microsoft office, screen sharing, adobe premier, etc... just stick with the free version and find free viable alternatives. Libreoffice, kdenlive, etc. How did you land on zorin to begin with? Most new users are recommended to use fedora, ubuntu-gnome, and linux mint. To me, just looking at zorins website they do not share the most basic principles of the linux space (being free and open source). I highly recomend switching, if you could run
echo $XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP
This will output the name of your display manager like gnome, kde, etc. The version of zorin you are running is more than certainly using a popular one. Just find a distro that uses the same one. And your user experience will be almost exactly the same. Zorin might have some QOL features but definitely not anything you couldnt implement yourself.
Feel free to reach out here for more help if you run into any brick walls. You already dual booted your pc so i have faith that you have a pretty good grasp on what you are doing. If time is a factor and you just need a distro that "works" stick with what you have, and find FOSS alternatives for zorin. Best of luck
As far as I know Zorin is FOSS, for what it's worth. It's mostly just bundled FOSS software with some slick themes and accessibility features, plus a few in-house system apps which they do seem to provide sources for.
They mention that it's open source on their website but they don't mention FOSS probably because the libre/gratis distinction is confusing for people.
Zorin itself is foss but paying for features like themeing and software Is imo against the spirit of linux, they should, (again imo) release zorin pro as the default and simply accept donations. Like most distro maintainers. Even more frustrating, is the advertised features are just normal features and software readily available for free on other distros being paywalled. Its very likely that a user could get all of the listed features on the free version without paying. I also misread the website, ms office and adobe premier are not even what is included. In fact they do not list the specific names of the alternatives that they use in the pro version. I would bet that the pro version Has all foss software that is being hidden behind the price tag. I will do more quick research and edit this comment if that is the case.
Edit: Yeah i nailed it, its all foss software available through most package managers or flatpak heres a list.
Additional Software Included in Zorin Pro: Office & Productivity:
LibreOffice: A comprehensive office suite compatible with Microsoft Office/365 documents: https://www.libreoffic...
Scribus: A desktop publishing application: https://sourceforge.ne...
Graphics & Multimedia: Krita: A powerful, open-source image editing and painting software: https://krita.org/
Inkscape: A vector graphics editor: https://inkscape.en.so...
Blender: A free and open-source 3D creation suite: https://www.blender.org/%E2%80%8B
GIMP: A free and open-source image manipulation program: https://www.gimp.org/d...%E2%80%8B
Evince: A Gnome document viewer: https://apps.gnome.org...
Foliate: A simple and lightweight e-book reader: https://flathub.org/ap...%E2%80%8B
Kdenlive: A non-linear video editor: https://kdenlive.org/e...%E2%80%8B
FreeCAD: A free and open-source 3D design application: https://www.freecad.or...
LibreCAD: A free and open-source 2D CAD software: https://wiki.librecad....
Darktable: An open-source digital photo management and editing tool: https://www.darktable....
Being able to sell FOSS is one of the freedoms "free software" refers to.
Honestly though I think the thing that struck me the most and I found kind of scummy was their "value statement" where they were advertising the OS by comparing it to the prices of the proprietary software is includes alternatives to. You misreading the website wasn't an accident, they designed it in a deceptive way IMO.
If they were more honest about it, I wouldn't have any problem with them charging for the convenience of having everything pre-bundled. Of course you could set everything up yourself, but Linux is notoriously finnicky. People want a complete experience, they want support. They want the slick branding.
Yeah fully agree, i just wasnt willing to outright call them scummy. If anything the 50$ price tag should drop to ~20$ since the software they are packaging is not even their own work.
I see it as a donation rather than a real "pro" version as a single terminal command can transform "lite" to "pro"
I installed the paid version of Zorin on my Parents machines, because while I could set it up for them just the same and then maintain it until they die, I'd rather pay 50$ and have nearly 0 work to do.
I make way over 50$ for 1 hour or Linux tech support, so there is no world where it would be worth.
But besides that I don't think your attitude is particularely useful for people that would rather shit just work than spend hours on setting it up themselves.
Did you even read the whole comment?
just stick with the free version and find free viable alternatives. Libreoffice, kdenlive, etc.
If time is a factor and you just need a distro that "works" stick with what you have, and find FOSS alternatives for zorin. Best of luck
I respected their time and was simply making a suggestion because zorin seems scummy locking default features behind a paywall.
Most distros come with a built in software downloader. If you consider it "work" to type kdenlive and click download ive got nothing else to say to you.
Even without costs you will always have some faction of FOSS users who view UIs and user-friendliness to be something that can be optimized away (and will always, always, let you know their feelings on the topic).
It's kind of creepy, weird, and unusual. However, I can see someone building a distro and creating a bunch of non-OSS themes and basically selling the themes. That's not beyond the pale, although it is (again) questionably moral given that they probably created all of those themes using free software that they didn't pay for. But whatever.. just keep that in mind.
The usual way of commoditizing Linux is to sell service - so you get, like, 4 tickets a month or something where someone is guaranteed to be there to try to fix whatever problem you have within a reasonable amount of time, and you don't have to either rely on the kindness of strangers.
Zorin is mainstream enough that I suspect if they were really violating the GPL, someone would be on their case already. You can't - usually, depending on the license - just repackage OSS and sell it. So if that's how you wanted to spend your money, you do you and don't worry about the comments on this thread.
Oh, about your question: according to the upgrade page, the "upgrade" is just access to more packages, probably in another repos. You won't have to re-install the distribution, and there won't be any impact on your dual boot. You're just getting more packages to install.
You can't - usually, depending on the license - just repackage OSS and sell it.
I'm pretty sure you can. GNU's Selling Free Software is for the GPL & doesn't specifically address selling someone else's OSS. But you should (I think?) be able to, so long as you don't violate the license. There are multiple views to selling foss, but I don't think that many will object, if you for example sell Linux DVDs at a low cost. (Not common any more, but this has been done before, I've heard)
I don't know much about Zorin, but selling foss is not inherently evil & illegal.
The whole thing about selling DVDs was that you were selling the DVD, not the distribution on it. You were "charging a reasonable price for the service of burning the DVD, for the media, and for distribution." Much of that went away with the internet, when people could download and burn ISOs themselves. It used to be quite common; not just distributions, but CDs full of OSS software. Again, the assumption and expectation was that you weren't selling the software, but the media. There was no such thing as a "Pro" version of Linux. There were commercial distributions, and there was a period when companies were trying to figure out ways to commoditize OSS, but there were also lawsuits, and it mostly settled out to be service agreements, which were in the end more lucrative anyway.
I disagree about the immorality of selling FOSS. Even in the very rare case that you built the entire program, from scratch, using no FOSS libraries, you probably still used gcc, or the Python interpreter, or go or rustc. And on most cases, you are using libraries that other people created and gave away for free. And instead of giving back to the community, so that the people who's software you're implicitly selling that your software is built and depends on, can't use it similarly for free. And odds are also good that, despite your shim is utterly reliant on their hard work, you're not splitting up the profit and sharing it with them. How much money do those people send to Linus Torvalds? Or the countless kernel contributors? To the people who've worked on libc?
I have absolutely no issue with people who request donations for the software that they built and regularly and consistently maintain. And people charging for OSX or Windows software? It costs more than just free time to develop and release on those platforms - the entire chain is commercial. But when your product is an unmeasurably tiny fraction of all of the gratis effort that went into the end product, well. It doesn't seem right to profit on other's work, does it?
Look, we're a capitalist society. It takes someone time and material to make a chair from scratch, and when you take it, they don't have it any more. They used nothing free except maybe YouTube videos, or their parent's training. The FOSS software ecosystem is the closest thing we have to a functioning communism in the world; it works because, while it may take my time to create something, it doesn't cost me more than my time, and once it's done it can be endlessly replicated and used by innumerable people at no significant cost to me. When actors take advantage of the free ecosystem and don't contribute back in like fashion, in my book that's unethical.
Stallman's usual take is "Yeah sure you can sell it, as long as you respect the 4 freedoms.". So I don't think selling Free Software is against the spirit of FOSS. The issue is rather that the Free Software is against the spirit of selling because realistically you can sell it to one entity which can then just make 7 billion copies of said software. At that point it's no longer financially viable to sell it for you.
I also think that the majority of people creating Free Software would be fine with someone else selling it. Remember how much permissive-licensed software is out there. If authors really cared, they would have licensed the software under GPL, but instead they even allow it to be used with commercial licensing. Obviously I'm not taking away your opinion, but I don't think your opinion represents the majority of FOSS.
I release under 3-Clause BSD, so I'm not restricting any sales, or use. You're probably right that I'm not the majority.
I don't know if Zorin doesen't just add additional repo to pro version. You should mail them and ask, if there could be any problems. Have you done some additional steps to dual boot? If not, then even installing pro version from .iso should be safe.
It's not a scam at all, Zorin is a good distro.
Personally, I dislike Zorin, but I can see your point. I didn't know it was Zorin at the time I I just find paywalling some FOSS stuff that isn't entirely yours very weird, and I also don't think users should touch almost anything Ubuntu-based, especially new ones. Mint might be the exception, but it's not to my tastes as well personally.
I think I agree with my university's Linux Users Group recommendation of Fedora, though I personally use Debian.
Honestly, if Debian would tidy up their website, make the Calamares-based installers the default, and perhaps had an installer with backports kernel built-in, it could be the easiest distro out there - I think everything else in Debian is almost perfect for most people. They don't even have to compromise on all that "universal operating system" stuff - they could just offer multiple installers. As for the website, I can get why they need to use a static site with HTML4, but that shouldn't stop them from designing a simple-to-use website.
Also, had no idea you were also in this community. Pleasant surprise.
I agree re: Fedora, especially the atomic varieties. I do think Zorin is good at what it is but it has a pretty specific use case.
Also, had no idea you were also in this community. Pleasant surprise.
Had the same thought, it's always nice to encounter a civilized person of distinguished taste and culture out here in the wilds.
They're not really paywalling FOSS, though. You can absolutely install it all and configure it yourself. You're paying for them to do the work so you don't have to.
I think it's pretty benign to charge for that to support development.