Is linux free 5009
To be sure. However, Ladislav, who runs Distrowatch, is sympathetic to that problem and has a "Major Distributions" link right off the front page (top right navigation box). Now, just to warn you, "Major" in that context consist mostly of things being believed to be widely used, which doesn't necessarily mean they have merit -- but Ladislav has some pretty good advice at the top of the "Major Distributions" page:
MEPIS and Xandros are considered the best for new Linux users who want to get productive in Linux as soon as possible without having to master all its complexities. On the other end of the spectrum, Gentoo, Debian, Slackware and FreeBSD are more advanced distributions that require plenty of learning before they can be used effectively. Mandriva, Red Hat, Ubuntu and SUSE can be clbuttified as good "middle-road" distributions.
Others (including me) in this newsgroup have also mentioned some others favourably: Kanotix, Ubuntu, CentOS.
The only route that I can see to that conclusion from the facts stated is via your belief that the distro as a whole...
Just to be clear on this, CentOS is not necessarily a great choice as a desktop distribution, but it's the appropriate answer when someone says "I want RHEL but consider Red Hat's pricing or licence terms not OK."
Ladislav highlights the beta releases because, of course, he's a news junkie catering to other news junkies. Also, if, say, you have a really cutting-edge x86 laptop whose hardware components seem difficult to support, you might be very eager to find the very latest test image of Kanotix, because that's one of its specialties.
Just a note: It's 5.10, not 5.1. The "5" is for 2005, and the "10" is the month of release. Ubuntu declare their intended release schedule a long time in advance, and have had a remarkable record of hitting their target dates. That's why I was saying that the 5.10 release should be out imminently: It's currently October, and I do believe the Ubuntu people when they say they'll make their release deadline.
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