this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2024
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My dad (in his mid 80s) told me proudly that he had just bought Linux and installed it on his computer. It's great that he wanted to try Linux but I wonder what malware-riddled scam distro he found, and how I'll sort it out on my next visit.
Can't be that bad. Some distros accept donations. It just could be that he felt he was making a purchase rather than just a donation.
Hopefully it's just something like this, not a scam.
Come back and let us know what you find out, please. If it's a malicious distro, let us know the site so we can warn others.
Not sure if it was Mint or Ubuntu, but one of them shows a donation box with a default amount when you click download. It's already downloading when the box shows up, but maybe he misinterpreted that.
Maybe elementaryOS? There is a Purchase button on the site, with a pay-what-you-want option. If possible to enter 0 though.
Doesn't Ubuntu and a few other distros still sell physical install discs?
They used to, but I don't think they do anymore. In fact, I think they used to send one to you for free. I got an official Ubuntu install disk for free at college (someone was handing them out), and I've been on Linux ever since.
I do see Ubuntu install USBs on Amazon, but I wouldn't trust those.
I ordered one years ago, still got it in the display cabinet but I'm sure it's long rotted at this point.
Yeah, I wish I still had mine, it was from before I started hating Canonical. What a great piece of history that would've been.
But no, I threw it out like I did so many other things at the time, because having less stuff makes moving a ton easier.
Zorin has a pro tier that costs money but it's supposed to have the look and feel of classic Windows - maybe it's that?
You used to be able to buy physical media. And that may be what they're talking about? Hard to say. For a long time this whole write it to a USB stick and install it was newfangled and not at all common. I 100% have a version of red hat in a box that I bought off a shelf of a local Best Buy back in the 90s. Yes you could have just downloaded and installed it or created your own install media. But having your own CD burners even weren't that common at the time. I remember 1999 being when I got my first CD burner and how special that was lol. It seems almost quaint by today's standards. And downloading wasn't really an option either. 56 kilobits per second if you were lucky would have taken days and days. Now it's just minutes over most broadband.
I gave my distro dev $20 for the bragging rights. More than I ever paid for Windows.