Announcing A New Linux Distro: BaitNSwitch Linux

khess 0 425 Views

Today, I'm announcing my new Linux company, HookLineNSinker, Inc. (HLNS) which will produce a new commercial Linux distribution: Pricey Linux. HLNS products include Pricey Linux Enterprise, Pricey Linux Small Business Server and The Pricey Linux Desktop. There are also Pricey Linux Support options for those of you who need 24x7 support for your Pricey Systems. And to comply with Linux licensing, we'll also offer a free, community edition of our Pricey Linux known as BaitNSwitch Linux.

BaitNSwitch Linux is the distribution where we test out new features, versions and options. It is to be used at your own risk and is generally not recommended for business or production use.

Why is it not recommended, you ask?

Well, BaitNSwitch is actually very stable, reliable and free but what makes it generally not acceptable for business use is that we don't provide commercial support for it--only community. Versions change often and, although we release a "stable" version and a less stable development version, we'd obviously prefer that you spend several thousand dollars per copy of our operating system, plus support and training.

We, at HLNS, want the community version users to know that there is more to free than just cost. While free (As in beer), might sound great on the surface; there's no commercial support, training or certifications to support it.

Our initial releases are as follows: Pricey Linux 1.0, the Mondo MegaBux release, is due out July 1 and soon to follow is the BaitNSwich 1.0 (Nerdy CheapSkate) release on July 8.

We look forward to embracing a new user community and making lots and lots of money from those of you who are adept enough to recognize that you need commercial support for all your Linux deployments.

Please write back and tell me about your experiences with other commercial vendors who offer community versions. You can also let me know how you'd like to get involved with the BaitNSwitch community.

Dani AI

Generated

The post from is clearly tongue-in-cheek, but it raises a practical question many teams face: when is it acceptable to run a vendor's free/community edition in production, and when is paid support justified? rightly called out vague marketing, saw the satire, and reminded the group that open-source code can be supported by third parties. Below are concise, experience-based criteria and steps to evaluate risk and operate a community distribution responsibly.

Quick evaluation checklist:

  • Support & SLAs — define required response times and escalation paths; community forums are not an SLA.
  • Security & patch cadence — confirm how quickly CVEs are fixed and published packages propagated.
  • Lifecycle & upgrades — verify supported lifetimes and whether in-place upgrades are tested.
  • Compatibility & certification — check required hardware and enterprise software compatibility/certs.
  • Ecosystem & tooling — look for management, update channels, and integration with config management.
  • Community health & third-party support — measure activity in bug trackers and the availability of consultants.

Safe rollout workflow:

  • Mirror and lab-test release channels before touching production.
  • Automate build and upgrade validation via CI and configuration management.
  • Do canary/staged rollouts (small subset → larger groups) with health checks.
  • Pin versions or use an LTS/stable channel for critical hosts to avoid surprise upgrades.
  • Maintain snapshots/boot-environments for quick rollback (VM snapshots, LVM/ZFS/Btrfs where available).
  • Keep a budgeted fallback (contracted support or retained consultant) for emergency escalations.

Best-practice troubleshooting: collect a minimal reproducible report (exact distro/kernel/package versions, logs like journalctl/dmesg, and reproduction steps) before filing upstream bugs or asking community channels. Treat vendor marketing that equates “free” with “unsupported” with healthy skepticism: the code can be supported externally, but the organization still needs to buy accountability and SLAs — the tradeoff pointed out. Since later confirmed the post was jest, the thread is a useful reminder to assess both technical and commercial risk before committing to any distribution.

Member Avatar for tobiax
tobiax 0 Newbie Poster

Uh, that sounds like a great concept, and I find it particularly interesting since I'm plotting a startup of my own. But I find myself having read the entire announcement without having any concept of what you are offering or why anyone should choose it - the only lead you give is the product title "Pricey Linux" which, to say the least, isn't going to make me grab for my wallet :)

Member Avatar for sbj3
sbj3 0 Newbie Poster

Surely you jest. Are you looking for customers that will be caught by buying your marketing hook line and sinker? Do you wish to bait them and then switch? It may sound good to the stock holders, but I'm afraid I'm not in your market.

Member Avatar for khess
khess 95 Practically a Master Poster

I do jest. This post was divinely inspired from an email conversation I had with a major Linux vendor's community manager. Some of the info here is directly lifted from that conversation. True but hard to believe.

Member Avatar for r_a_trip
r_a_trip 0 Newbie Poster

Cheap potshots at Red Hat/Novell.

We, at HLNS, want the community version users to know that there is more to free than just cost. While free (As in beer), might sound great on the surface; there's no commercial support, training or certifications to support it.

Which is patently untrue. Maybe HLNS doesn't support the community version, but since the code is free as in speech and as in beer, anyone can offer support or training for it.

Stop thinking in terms of single vendor, single support option. Pressing the proprietary cookie cutter on FOSS just clouds your vision.

So what if the vendor tries to cash in on the lemming attitude that "the one who sells it should also be the throat to choke." It's a free market.

The true beauty of FOSS lies in the fact that anyone can support it. The source code isn't a trade secret and the licensing gives us many of the rights the copyright holder has, so we are not beholden to the copyright holder for changes.

Of course being CIO in this circumstance, means you really have to start doing your job. No more pointing fingers. You can't blame company Foo, if your chosen support partner Bar for Foo products screws it up.

Member Avatar for khess
khess 95 Practically a Master Poster

You're right but you took a direct quote from that conversation to analyze. I didn't say those words; they were said to me. Interesting, huh?

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.

Edit Preview