In the Beginning Was the Command Line (1999)

> Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music."

Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!"

Did Linux distros actually offer support at some point? (By what I assume would be some project contributor ssh-ing into your machine)

My impression was always the arguments were more like "Well yes, but we have this literal building full of technical manuals that describe every bolt and screw of your tank - and we can give you a copy of all of them for free! And think about it - after you have taken some modest effort to read and learn all of them by heart, you'll be able to fix and even modify your tank all on your own! No more dependence on crooked car dealers! And if you need help, we have monthly community meetups you can attend and talk with people just as tank-crazy as you are! (please only attend if you're sufficiently tank-crazy, and PLEASE only after you read the manuals)"

(This was decades ago, the situation has gotten significantly better today)

> Did Linux distros actually offer support at some point?

Ever wonder how Red Hat became a billion-dollar company before it was bought by IBM, and now makes up a huge segment of IBM's revenue stream?

Have you noticed SuSE is still around?

Have you ever speculated on how Canonical keeps its lights on?

Paid support, my naive friend. Linux support is big business and is what keeps the popular distros alive.