There are distributions that have a "live CD", meaning you can boot via CD and play around with Linux, and your existing installation is not touched at all. The first ones that come to mind are Knoppix and Ubuntu (and probably another flavour thereof: KUbuntu).

There is no installation required, and if you don't like it, you just throw away the CD.

Well, cant get any more up front than that. I was actually intending to do a dual boot, since I already have a partition set up solely for programming. It will just end up being a Linux/programming partition. Hey that reminds me! Linux doesnt support NTFS. How would I handle a dual boot, FAT32?

Thanks guys, I will get right on liberating all my computers from the worst that capitalism has to offer.

I really don't think people should have to pay to have their computers work. OSs should remain open source and monetarily free. So should media players, utilities, and file formats. It is OK to have proprietary software in the interest of making money, but anything else should remain free in the spirit of free knowledge.

Thanks again, I'll be back after washing dishes for seven hours at the local KFC.

I used to have high hopes for it too, years ago.. but it seems they are years behind, all the time

As for linux, I'd do what people above said, get a "Live CD" to get a feel of which one you like. I liked Kubuntu (KDE instead of Gnome as they use in vanilla Ubuntu). It found all my hardware on my crappy Acer laptop

What they're trying to do is basically unrealistic. By the time they have something that can be a solid windows (let's say XP) replacement, MS will have moved on so far that they'll still be waaay behind. I'm sure they'll have their loyal following and all, but I seriously don't expect it to ever even compete with *nix, mustless Windows.

Who needs ReactOS? Use FreeDOS!

Seriously, a little research? The guy who founded the chain and came up with the "original recipe" chicken originally started selling fried chicken in the 1930s in Kentucky.

Well BAF, I guess i am a crappy idealist.

Microsoft charges for most tech support unless you purchase a retail copy of the software. Then they charge for any tech support that doesn't directly involve Windows.

As for KFC, we have both grilled and fried chicken. My store was actually one of the test locations for the Indianapolis/Chicago area. The owner was nice enough to fly down from Michigan in his leer-jet to bitch at our store before it went national. Then the managers from our region all flocked in to learn the trade secrets we spent a YEAR perfecting in secret. Oprah can go to hell.

FAT32 is a very sub-optimal file system; AFAIK, it maxes out at 30 GB, it has a huge overhead for "large" partitions, it doesn't have journalling (which means that any crash can leave the file system in a transitional state, leading to corrupt data), and it tends to get fragmented badly in no time.

Ubuntu seems to support NTFS. You do need windows to create and format NTFS partitions, though, and since NTFS is basically a closed standard, there are no guarantees about the safety of your data. Also, NTFS has windows-style user permissions built in, so in order to mount an NTFS partition in ubuntu, you need to provide windows credentials (which shouldn't be a problem though).

The other method would be an ext2/ext3 driver for windows. I haven't used any myself, but from what I read, this may be a useable alternative.

Anyhow, with today's hardware, you probably have plenty of disk space to spare to have two data partitions (one for windows, one for linux) and write data back and forth.

One more important hint: Install the dumbest OS first. For an XP / Vista / Linux triple boot configuration, this means XP goes first, then Vista, then Linux. Otherwise, the "dumber" OS will mess up the smarter one's boot configuration (e.g. XP overwriting grub).

That knowledge costs money. Lots of money. A software developer needs to eat, and a software company needs an office with servers and workstations and desks and coffee and snacks and all that. People work hard to produce that knowledge, and they need to be paid for that. Even all those open source developers need an income, and most of them either do commercial work for a living while working on open source projects in their spare time, or the entire project is sponsored by some kind of company that has commercial interests in the otherwise free project (as is the case with, for example, PHP - Zend makes a lot of money offering add-ons, IDEs, educational material and all sorts of support for it). Even Linux itself is partly driven by a number of companies such as RedHat, as well as non-profit organisations (the term "non-profit" does not imply that they don't pay any salaries!), and I doubt it could have become even this large without their support.
Of course people pay money for computers that work: The computer itself isn't free, and most computers come bundled with some kind of OS. You pay for the whole package, computer and OS, and if the combo doesn't work, you can take the thing back to the store and demand they fix it.
In fact, the situation with computers is quite odd. People buy computers, then install a different OS, and complain when it doesn't work. Or they complain that they have to "pay" for the OS. You don't see the same thing with other devices though: An average car today comes with a truckload of microprocessors, and many of them have some kind of firmware installed. Nobody complains about paying for that, and neither does anybody utter the idea that the installed firmware could be replaced by something "better".

Really, I don't see why software in general "should" be free. People make something, they sell (or licence) it. What's wrong about that? Nothing but the fact that other people make similar things and don't charge money for them.
We all know people need to eat. Suppose I offer free food - does that mean the bakery next door is suddenly somehow doing something unethical?

Lotsa capitalists here.
* Releases something for free just to rile them up.

I will only say that there are a great many operating systems which are free, and apparently still around, even though the developers are not being paid. They don't seem to be of lower quality than commercial OSs, in fact many people would argue that they're higher quality. How can this be?

Their business model relies on convincing people to pay money for something that is freely available. I don't see an honest way to do this. Surely if they are able to stay in business, it could only be by harming their customers?

I have no problems paying money when there is no free alternative. Say, commercial games or movies. But why should I spend money on an operating system, or a word processor, when these things have been freely available for years? I must buy only because the manufacturers of commercial versions engage in dirty tricks to force me to do so. And I must buy them over and over and over again.

Now you're just being silly... The records of the Borg intimidating, lying, using FUD and other underhanded tactics are legendary and not worth bringing up the thousands of links yet again.