Due to the terrible costs of operating systems and software (especially if you have multiple machines), I am trying since two years to slowly switch to free software.
This seems for the time being to be a major trend, and Linux is for sure a reference point for this move. There are many distributions of Linux (Suse, Ubuntu, Knoppix, Slackware, RedHat, ...) that try to simplify its usage by providing software packages with preinstalled user interfaces, applications and system setups but unfortunately it's not yet simple enough - you'll run into problems if you don't know what's going on in the background. But we are definitely moving towards the right direction (see kde/gnome, d-bus, openoffice, ...).
Anyway, I am using since a while Gentoo. What made me switch to this distribution is the fact that everything you installed gets compiled and optimized for your personal machine and because their FAQs and support are the best ones around. I am continously gathering notes about how stuff works, what I have to do if..., and similar things and I thought that it would have been nice to publish them as they could be useful as well to you. So, here they are - all informations (directories etc...) are related to the Gentoo distribution: