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Paid Linux Support For Individual Users?
Frustrated and Disappointed asks: "I have been using Linux for a decade, but sometimes I just don't know how to solve a problem. What's more, I don't have the time (or interest) to teach myself enough about some obscure subject to debug it myself. Are there companies or freelancers out there willing to provide paid support for individuals on a problem-by-problem basis? I don't need yearly maintenance or weekly support, just a couple times a year. This time around, for example, I can't get a desktop box to play sound. The HOWTOs are years out of date, there are no man pages, the mailing lists are silent, and the #debian channels were nothing but insults. While I don't mind doing some of my own problem solving -- I'm a very technical person -- I have a job and other responsibilities, and I'm not interested in hacking sound drivers to begin with. I don't have the option of installing a whole new distro just to qualify for a vendor's support plan."
Believe it or not, I presented a business proposal for a company specializing in such information gathering, just a few weeks ago. Ultimately, we rejected the idea because we couldn't find an acceptable price point.
The real issue is that there are simply too many distributions (and to a lessor extent, too much variation in hardware). Err... let me be more clear. I could choose to support Debian, RedHat and SuSE. Those happen to be the ones with the most available documentation such that we couldn't reasonably charge oh say $150 an hour, or per solution or whatever unit of measure. Keep in mind we would need to be able to cover our expenses and make enough of a profit to pay off the business loan or quit our day jobs. That price would be ok for distros such as Slackware or Yellow Dog, but guess what, there's not enough people out there running those distros to ensure demand.
The only way we could even come close to developing a workable plan would be if we severely restricted distributions and hardware. Guess what? We then start competing with Apple.
You are probably much better off contacting your local community college or university and seeing if there's some bright college student who would be willing to solve your sound problems as a school project (or for some spending money).