A lot of people complain about why I'm charging for stuff that are FOSS. Simple and straightforward answer, I'm Not.
I'm charging for the time, work and efforts I put in creating those amazing stuff for you.
There are three ways to support my efforts:
If you just want the ISO, join my Patreon, details below; OR help spread the word about XeroLinux by talking about it; OR help test, send detailed feedback, troubleshoot, or otherwise help contribute towards my project and vision.
Thank you so much for reading, understanding, and for the support.
Why though? My country, (Lebanon) is currently going through a bad economic & political crisis. In light of the current situation, maintaining the project, or at least any extra ones, pro-bono, is getting harder than it should be. Your contributions will go a long way into sustaining it for a long time to come.
As a person who loves Linux, I share those things with you, So you can take inspiration and try to create your own, So that you can learn. Not because I want an audience to buy my stuff. I don't like to do that, but due to current situation, without a job to feed myself, or pay the outstanding monthly bills, I have no choice.
It's not like I do not offer a free way to grab this and any future projects I work on. Either support me to get a pre-built ISO by joining the $25 Patreon Tier, or, if you feel that this is too steep of a price to pay for an ISO, or cannot afford it, you can just opt to donate Any amount to my Fundraiser, just make sure you leave a message letting me know you are interested in the ISO. Or get it for FREE by following a simple guide I have painstakingly put together. Simple as that.
All the funds I get from this, Will eventually be invested towards making XeroLinux support a wider rage of hardware. I maintain this project all by myself with code contributions by my good friends @keyaedisa for the ABS ISO build tool & @vnepogodin for Xero Hello app.
Let me tell you why... I'm a KDE Plasma user, I have been using it for almost 3 years till date. I don't use anything else. But I have created this and will make others in the future as you keep asking me to, Kind of demanded. Like do this and do that.
I understand, there are many other and in most cases better and Free choices out there. But you came here for a reason. You like my work. Also consider that I am a one man show, not a Company with a huge team and income or contributions from the likes of Microsoft / Redhat or others. I need to sustain myself and my projects...
- Consider this...
First, let me be clear, I am not as well known as many other projects out there. As a result I am not getting as many downloads as I would hope. With that in mind...
Assume working for 15USD an hour (lowest) for 8 hours (regular 9to5 job) which is currently not possible due to economic crisis. And if it takes 7 days to build a Distro with a DE/WM (trust me it takes that much time when you do everything from scratch, not to mention all the time it takes to do the research with Linux moving so damn fast), You should be getting 15x8x7 = 840 USD. I put a 25USD tag on this Edition and others I will potentially be working on. Even if 20 people purchase it, a dream due to small size of project, I still get 500 USD (275 USD actually after Taxes & other charges). Dude I'm not getting half of the actual work I've done.
FOSS doesn't mean FREE OF COST. It means Freedom to choose. So you're free to choose either my stuff or other stuff.
Yes, I'm a FOSS maintainer and I charge for my time, work and efforts. That's it.
Thank you for understanding. I don't mean to be harsh, but unfortunately that's the reality, and it can be hard at times.