Today (yesterday for me but I'm in Australia) Dapper Drake was released. Ubuntu is a version of linux that a was founded by an extremely rich south african entrepreneur Mark ShuttleWorth (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_Ltd). Basically they took the already very good free software outthere, extended from Debian's excellent package management system and just tied the whole thing together and polished it so it was one more or less coherent OS. It works very well and for something that is free its amazing how much cool stuff you can find there - you can spend hours just browsing the packages installing random cool shit and giving it a wiz.
That said - it can still be a bitch to install. On my laptop I ended up compiling 3 drivers. If you want to give it a go I'll monitor this thread and try to help out.
Once you install you will get free Office, Net, Instant Messenger, Games, etc. etc. Check it out at
http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop
(I'm not personally involved in Ubuntu project)