Well, no.
You can get it for free with Debian, or even Ubuntu on an LTS version. Just not forever.
The reason enterprises want to pay money for extended long-term support is so they don’t have to keep jumping major versions (with the possibility of breaking whatever unique environment they had going) every couple of years.
Even the Linux kernel itself scaled back how far back they’re willing to support, leaving long-term users with the work of sourcing backports or constantly testing out new features.
I’m very comfortable running Sid at home, but there the annoyance is limited to one person if I have to spend a couple hours combing through git diffs.
This is what you get when you pay.
Security backports to old versions of software that have fallen out of support.
Or, you know… you can get it for free with Debian, which circles back to my initial argument.
Well, no.
You can get it for free with Debian, or even Ubuntu on an LTS version. Just not forever.
The reason enterprises want to pay money for extended long-term support is so they don’t have to keep jumping major versions (with the possibility of breaking whatever unique environment they had going) every couple of years.
Even the Linux kernel itself scaled back how far back they’re willing to support, leaving long-term users with the work of sourcing backports or constantly testing out new features.
I’m very comfortable running Sid at home, but there the annoyance is limited to one person if I have to spend a couple hours combing through git diffs.
Ten years between OS refreshes is money.