Whilst waiting for the Mandrake CDs to be shipped, I realised that Wal-Mart is the hidden master behind the whole Linux community. Let me explain. The single most troubling aspect of Linux is that it is free. To the commercially savvy mind this prompts the question: How does the company afford to keep going? مواقع الرياضة And if it can’t keep going, am I going to be left high and dry with unsupported and unsupportable software? Admittedly, for the lazy geek these Linux distribution companies package up their wares and sell them for a few dollars (a few hundred if you’re a company) but I can’t believe they sell many. The reason I turned to Linux in the first place is that it’s cheap and I’m cheap so I’m not going to spend any more than I have to. And if I’m a corporate customer I’m probably worried about where the company revenue is coming from and it’s medium term survival prospects – hence a Catch-22 situtaion. The other tack they take is to try and get you to either donate or to join a Linux club – again for a few dollars a year. All of this comes across like a less persistent version of Mrs Doyle from Fr Ted. Go on, you will join, go on, go on, go on. Ok click here not to join and download the software for free anyway. I’m serious. Check out Mandrake version of this little psychodrama here. Clearly all of this fails to make a big impact on greedy Linux-hunters like myself. Check out the fastdiscs.com web page referred to yesterday. On the main page you will see a little counter that records how much money from the sales of Linux CDs has been passed back to the Linux community. Let me quote in its entirety: “Since 15/11/2003, fastdiscs. نتائج كوبا امريكا 2023 com customers have donated a total of £56.00 to free software projects.” That’s fifty-six pounds, people!! Hardly enough to pay for the electricity to run a single computer over this period. So how do they keep going? Where is their money coming from? Cruising around the Linux sites the realisation suddenly hit me: they all sell branded mugs and T-shirts.s the principle of back-end sales (“the public, overt face of any business will rarely reveal where the real money comes from”) illustrated in text book fashion. The geeks come to the site for the software which is essentially free (the hook) and come away with their branded goods. As there are so many different versions of Linux, the geeks can now identify with a single brand, their brand, they have their Linux colours and their special Linux affiliation. Now they can start my-linux-is-better-than-your-linux arguments while proudly displaying their version of the Linux penguin crest. نتائج يورو 2024 No different, in fact, to the behaviour of football fans in their team colours, really. And, though I can’t prove it yet, I fancy Wal-Mart is sitting behind the whole enterprise, the secret owner of all the different Linuxes, happily counting the money pouring in from T-Shirt and mug sales.