How much longer will you be able to get those free distros? By the look of things, not very long. Now that congress is officially an arm of the **AAs I mean, they're not even pretending anymore--and there are hearings where p2p on University campuses is compared to an arms race (what's with all the war talk?) and foreign phones are banned because of patent violations--how much longer before Linux is banned because of patent violations? It's only a short hop from being in bed with the **AAs to curling up beside Microsoft, which has been busy as well.
If you haven't been following the news, the corporate giant has signed 'patent protection' agreements with Novell, Xandros, and now LG Electronics (smaller deals with Samsung and Fuji); what'll you wager that some clueless representative or Senator will cite these agreements as a reason to curtail the dangerous GPLv3 and Linux as a whole? They've already said that teh internets, other than being a series of tubes (and not a truck), to be teh danger--they've set aside a whole month to scare remind folks of that fact. Slip in a provision in a big bill to protect Tivo, and they're golden.
Just another reason to download early and often all the easy to set up distros you can--that dangerous internet may soon be changing, and for the worse, at least in the US. Cutting funding to colleges? Letting the US slip to 15th out 30 in broadband connectivity? Acting as a direct enforcement arm of the movie and music industries so that intellectual property rights can preserve the well-stocked bank accounts of a few rich fatcats? How much do they need before they're satisfied?
And the sad fact is, apart from setting the US further back in the education and tech sectors, they're propping up a failed business model:
One of the most misguided things going on in the world at the moment is the attempt by the US government to force other countries to adopt what they call US-style "Intellectual Property Rights". The underlying economic theory for this appears to be that the US and UK can lose their industrial manufacturing base, outsourcing it to India or China, and still maintain their primary positions in the world by controlling the information used to design the products manufactured by this cheap labor, or by selling digital content to the newly affluent consumers in these countries.
An amazing read written by Jeremy Allison. You should read the entire article, as well as his wikipedia entry to get a sense of just who he is, and how much credence to give what he says. When I say it, it's just a loonball rant, but when he speaks up, you should take notice.
By removing any semblance of fair use, locking down 'IP' rights and patents for a few favored companies so tight, they're also harming the greatest strength of the US--its creativity. If they are going to legislate a failed business model, why not legislate a failed/rejected OS as well? Open Source looks more and more attractive by the day.
The forces of greed are going to lose, but they're not going to go down without a massive paroxysm of paranoiac FUD; the only question is how much are they going to cripple the US and for how long.
Just as with the stem cell debate, tech companies will quietly move away from the US as China, India, Singapore, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan embrace them, without the fear of onerous patent and 'IP' lawsuits hanging over their heads.
But don't let me harsh your buzz; Linux and open source is just for hobbyists and will never, ever be 'ready for the desktop'. I mean, you might have to learn something, and well, that's just such a hassle. Much easier to just let it all slide on by, and sign up for your next software and hardware 'upgrade'. That cycle will only last forever.
On a somewhat lighter note, those adventurous enough can try out the first Alpha release of Gutsy Gibbon, the code name for Ubuntu 7.10; the mirrors are here. Some very exciting stuff in this upcoming release, you can read about it here; it will most certainly break your machine, so don't say I didn't warn you. Only a nut would try it, which is why I've got the torrent going now.