Red Hat operates on a business model based on open-source software, development within a community, professional quality assurance, and subscription-based customer support. They produce open-source code so that more programmers can make adaptations and improvements.

Is Red Hat Linux free?

The no-cost Red Hat Developer Subscription for Individuals is available and includes Red Hat Enterprise Linux along with numerous other Red Hat technologies. Users can access this no-cost subscription by joining the Red Hat Developer program at Joining the program is free.

Why Red Hat Linux is not free?

Well, the “not free” part is for officially supported updates and support for your OS. In a big corporate, where uptime is key and MTTR has to be as low as possible – this is where commercial grade RHEL comes to the fore. Even with CentOS which is basically RHEL, the support is not as good Red Hat themselves.