Linux community
Linux developer and user communities
Linux is largely driven by its developer and user communities. Some vendors develop and fund their distributions on a volunteer basis, Debian being a well-known example.
Others maintain a community version of their commercial distributions, as Red Hat does with Fedora.
Linux Users Groups promote Linux
In many cities and regions, local associations known as Linux Users Groups (LUGs) seek to promote Linux and by extension free software. They hold meetings and provide free demonstrations, training, technical support, and operating system installation to new users.
There are also many internet communities that seek to provide support to Linux users and developers. Most distributions and open source projects have IRC chatrooms or newsgroups. Online forums are another means for support, with notable examples being LinuxQuestions.org and the Gentoo forums.
Linux distributions host mailing lists; commonly there will be a specific topic such as usage or development for a given list.
Technology websites with a Linux focus
- Linux Weekly News is a weekly digest of Linux-related news.
- The Linux Journal is an online magazine of Linux articles published monthly.
- Slashdot is a technology-related news website with many stories on Linux and open source software.
- Groklaw has written in depth about Linux-related legal proceedings.
- There are many articles relevant to the Linux kernel and its relationship with the GNU on the project's website.
Selling, supporting and contributing to Linux
Although Linux is generally available free of charge, several large corporations have established business models that involve selling, supporting, and contributing to Linux and free software.
These include Dell, IBM, HP, Sun Microsystems, Novell, and Red Hat. The free software licenses on which Linux is based explicitly accommodate and encourage commercialisation; the relationship between Linux as a whole and individual vendors may be seen as symbiotic.
One common business model of commercial suppliers is charging for support, especially for business users. A number of companies also offer a specialised business version of their distribution, which adds proprietary support packages and tools to administer higher numbers of installations or to simplify administrative tasks.
Another business model is to give away the software in order to sell hardware.
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