You should probably add to the post that the context of your title is "I want more people to pay for Linux, even if they don't have to" cause right now it can be interpreted as "Ubuntu now makes you pay for Linux" given the massive amount of disinformation surrounding Canonical and Ubuntu Pro.

If you want to pay, go right ahead.

But Ubuntu is the last distro deserving - what a mess.

Well I can tell you I get downvoted for mentioning zorin and from comments it would seem it because they have a paid option. The funny thing is I get complaints because the paid option does have a perk (a gui chooser for emulating a osx or choice of several windows versions) and a linux distor should not be doing that but I also get the reverse that the paid perk is a stupid thing that is not worth it and pointless. Granted paying gets support the usual perk. I kinda thought ubuntu had some sort of enterprise thing to get formal support but maybe only suse and redhat did that. So there are definately some folks that get something in their craw if a paid option is present. I will say I hope zorin is passing on at least half of anything it gets to ubuntu who should be passing back to debian who should pass back to kernel development. I mean zorin is really pretty stock ubuntu lts with a bunch of preinstalled software and some gui tweaks so that the computer is pretty good to go right after installation. I guess though most respins are like that. Just prechosen configs and software packaged together.

Paying for services isn't philosophically incompatible with FOSS, that's how companies like RedHat broke through back in the day, but paying for "quick and high-quality security updates" strikes me as alarming. Am I to take from that that they're holding back high-quality security updates from some users? Unless maybe we're talking about extended support for EoL software.

Pro is free for 5 devices for individuals.

If you are running a business, Yes pay for pro in the same way you would have paid for windows.

If you want technical support, of course you do. Just because a code is open source does not mean it should be free. Developers need to eat too. Another issue is that there are distributions such as ZorinOS that charge money for the right to use a pro version, when in reality it is the same version that you can configure yourself and that ZorinOS belongs to a company, not a user community.

I mean, redhat has been a paid version and it's been around for years

I’d be happy to pay for things like Ubuntu Touch to have quickly a viable alternative to Android and iOS. It’s possible to donate, but donations tend to not be reliable or make development viable at all. Paying for Open Source seems fine, as long as fund allocation is fully transparent.

For desktop? Ubuntu is one of the worst and slowest desktop distributions; nobody should be paying for that.

If you need what they provide, I don’t see why not. It’s great to monetarily support open source. Devs need to eat too.

Seems fine, I don't see why a home/DIY user would stay on an Ubuntu LTS release for more than 5 years.

I'd gladly pay, and I do support some foss projects.

However I would not pay Canonical for anything. I don't like their products or some of their practices.

We have to invest time for the helpdesk. It's may be ours, or others (in paying for it). However, I think the Odoo experience show how much this economic model is an incentive to get the software as hard as possible to maintain.

Maybe we sall have many cooperatives, independents or hire people instead