IT Lesson

• PDF2Word Online
• Via CLC Online

The PDF-to-Word conversion occurs directly on the site and can be saved to a location of your choosing. You dont need to provide your email address. The Word document will be ready immediately after the conversion is done.

Cool! However, I am sure there are several other interesting FREE PDF-to-Word converters out there.


Indeed there is! Here is one: Convert PDF-to-Word

"I have only found one so far that does a great job (Convert PDF-to-Word), it actually looks almost identical to the PDF file, its an online converter, sadly enough its with the email thing, but I can live with that when I get great results..." - Kim Celinder

Thanks for the suggestion Kim Celinder!

However, what if you are looking for a free PDF-to-Word desktop application instead of an online version, do you have any options?

Yes, try Smartsofts free PDF-to-Word Converter (Thanks Nedelcho!). What do you think?

Do anyone out there have even a better PDF-to-Word converter to suggest? :)

• Related Posts - Edu2.0 & LectureShare

Can We Host and Facilitate Our Courses Online For Free?

Are there any FREE Course/Learning Management Systems (C/LMS) out there that require no financial hardware, software and hosting investments? In other words, are the any free hosted C/LMS that we can explore and perhaps use?

FREE HOSTED C/LMS?
Here are a few free hosted C/LMS that you might want to explore, before considering investing hardcore money on a commercial alternative:

1. Schoology
   A free web-based learning management system (LMS) built on a social network. Schoology leverages the familiarity of popular social media tools to improve communication and collaboration.
   
   
2. Nfomedia
   A web application designed especially to enable interaction outside of the classroom for higher education courses. Features include: wiki content editing, course blogs, online grades, announcements, text messaging, Nfo mail, message boards, student journals, and chat.
   
   
3. Edu2.0
   A Free web-based education site with a comprehensive set of features for teachers, students and parents. Features include: content management/sharing, calendar, attendance tracking, quiz, forums, notifications, and grade book with graphical reports.
   
   
4. MyiCourse
   Provides tools for users to build, manage and deliver courses. Users can even construct private and public universities. It allows a multi-media approach using video, audio, images and PDFs. Students can be timed, tested and they can send their transcripts after course completion. It also allows sharing of academic courses for all to use.
   
   
5. LectureShare
   A service that connects students and instructors by allowing instructors to post course material and allowing students to get course updates via text messages, emails or RSS.
   
   
6. SchoolRack
   Is a free online tool for K-12 teachers to establish classroom portals for students and parents. Features include calendar, file sharing, discussion boards, internal messaging, mailing lists, and online assignment collection for teachers to use.
   
   
7. eLearning Community 2.0
   A social site for knowledge seekers to enrich their knowledge through online learning, sharing and socializing to make new friends without boundaries (It even includes an online conferencing tool! Then again you could always integrate WiZiQ or DimDim if this is not already included in your system).
   
   
8. Ecto
   A collaborative personal learning environment. Any member of Ecto (students, teachers, publishers) can create and share content. It claims to be the only learning management system built from the ground up on the principles and architecture of social software.
   
   
9. Chalksite
   A web package designed for teachers, giving them class-level Web sites and tools. Features include: content management, messages, assignments, forums, and grade books.
   
   
10. CollegeBrain.net
    A free web-based Course Management Service (CMS) that enables instructors to manage their courses online and provides students with collaborative tools to interact with their classmates. They dont allow the usage of advertisements on their course management tools, nor do they charge license fees. This is certainly a great plus, because I would love to learn without being stuffed with advertisements from every corner of the screen.
    

If we explore further, I suppose we will discover several more free hosted C/LMS. By the end of 2008, it wouldnt surprise me if the number of free hosted C/LMS will increase to beyond 100. How do they make money? Advertising, donations, venture capital, etc.! I suppose some are holding on (while loosing money!) hoping that some big Giant (e.g. MSN, Yahoo, Google and Facebook) will soon acquire them for a big buck.

For whatever reason they are doing it (noble and/or business), we users are going to increasingly be spoilt for choice, and issue of free will not be sufficient. In addition, these learning solutions would need to be easy-to-learn/use, and empower us with the necessary learning tools, features and capacities (storage, scalability, export/import tools, 24/7 support, etc.) to enable us to facilitate effective and engaging learning environments tailored to students learning needs.

IMAGINE!
Alright, we have time-ported to 2012. I suppose the University has its own system (commercial, open source, or in-house built) to manage all the critical student, staff, and course data (records, billing, results, registration, etc.), but interestingly most systems have managed to go beyond, and now enable educators to choose which C/LMS (or social/collaborative learning system) that they would want to use to facilitate learning, if the local one does not meet their needs. Not only can they change template and customize features used, they can also use externally hosted C/LMS if they want (application assembly tool! Widgets!). This has been enabled, because all systems now communicate through a common language, enabling educators to easily import and export (or integrate) courses, content, and results with a few simple clicks.

The beauty of all this is that now Universities, Colleges, and Schools can invest more of their funds instead on hiring top-notch educators, and have larger budgets for training and faculty support. e-Learning CMS/LMS/PLE (Personal Learning Environments) providers will get their share via advertising, donations, and venture capital. Tools are free! Content is free! Learning is free!

Interestingly, some entrepreneurial students would have figured out ways to make money sense out of all this! They will be making money by selling their lecture notes, exams information, written reports, study guides, examination tips, etc. using tools like ShareNotes. Also, new advertising models will have blossomed basically paying both the students study fees and lecturers basic salaries, so that will also not be much of an issue. The Internet will be everywhere, computer devices will be charged by human touch. The only thing separating us from learning is our will or motivation to learn!

The free (at least partially!) global formal learning network ecosystem is complete. What a wonderful world! Can we do it? Yes, we can! Is this a good idea? I suppose I will use my imagination to come up with a better one soon :)

• Link to LearnOutLoud.com Free Stuff
• Reference - Learn Out Loud (Wynn Williamson)

WHAT?
LearnOutLoud.com is a one-stop destination for audio and video learning. Its collection allows you to browse over 15,000 educational audio books, MP3 downloads, podcasts, and videos.

JUICE?
As ZaidLearn is really about discovering, exploring, and reflecting free and/or open educational resources and tools, my interest on this site is only for the FREE STUFF. And LearnOutLoud.com has got some really juicy stuff not worth missing, including the:

• Free Directory - LearnOutLoud.com has scoured the Internet to bring you over 500 free audio and video titles (looking at the item numbers, it looks like it is more than 2000 items now, but I suppose that some of the items are in more than one category). Most audio titles can be downloaded in digital formats such as MP3 and most video titles are available to stream online.
• Authors - Complete resource to audio books from some of the greatest authors in self development, business, and more.
• Publishers - Comprehensive database of audio publishers including resources for language learning, rental services, and more.
• Articles - Dozens of free articles covering specific topics with audio & video suggestions to get you learning.
• Podcasts - It offers a number of its own educational podcasts.

In addition, you can enjoy their E-Magazine along with their Free Resource of the Day Email keep you updated on the world of audio & video learning.

Alright, that sounds cool, but what about the proof-of-juice? Here are a few individual podcasts that might get your learning mind ticking a bit:

• Malcolm X - Message To The Grass Roots
• Bill Gates - Software Breakthroughs
• A Conversation with G. Richard Wagoner, Chairman and CEO, General Motors
• The Search - John Battelle Speaks at Google NYC
• Barack Obama - "The Audacity of Hope"
• Thomas L. Friedman - The World is Flat
• A Conversation with Jack Welch
• Hedrick Smith - Is Wal-Mart Good for America?
• Martin Luther King, Jr. - I Have a Dream
• Mohandas Gandhi - A Spiritual Message to the World

I arrest my case :)

• SlideShare version
• SlideBoom version
• PDF version (46 MB)

For those of you who have no idea what Ramadan is, you can click here for starters.

"...It is the Islamic month of fasting, in which participating Muslims do not eat or drink anything from dawn until sunset. Fasting is meant to teach the person patience, sacrifice and humility. Ramadan is a time to fast for the sake of God, and to offer even more prayer than usual. In Ramadan Muslims ask forgiveness for past sins, pray for guidance into the future, ask for help in refrain from everyday evils and try to purify themselves through self-restraint and good deeds."

Non-Muslims often think that fasting is a burden to Muslims, but we mostly look forward to it, and really enjoy the daily little struggles. Besides the obvious reasons (health, spiritual growth, empathy, bonding, sharing, awakening, discipline, etc.), I love this month because my brain neurons (or synapses) become more active, stimulating new creative connections during it. Also, my energy level increases. However, this energy increase does not seem to apply to many of my Muslim colleagues (I suppose I am bit different in that sense!). One reason could be that the blood circulation to the brain increases during fasting, while the stomach and digestion organs are taking food-free yoga lessons during the day (Can a doctor please explain why?). In short, I love the month of Ramadan for many reasons.


e-LEARNING eBOOKS COLLECTION
I suppose to continue with the spirit of learning and sharing during this special month, I have compiled an Amazing collection of free e-Learning ebooks in a quite visual stimulating chunked manner (Instructional Designers please evaluate!). Well, whether it is Amazing or not, I leave it up to you to decide. I suppose I used that word to attract your attention, and if you are reading now, I suppose it is kind of working. This time around, I have dumped SlideShare for SlideBoom to stimulate your mind to explore a bunch of interesting free e-learning related ebooks, and sites to find more ebooks:




Click here to download the PDF version (46 MB).

Here are the quick links (my favorite! Easy to access and replicate by others!):

1. LEARNING 2.0
   
2. Educating the Net Generation
3. Learning Spaces
4. Theory and Practice of Online Learning
5. Open Educational Resources Handbooks: One, Two, Three
6. The Insiders Guide To Becoming a Rapid E-Learning Pro
7. Top 100 Tools for Learning
8. MASIE’s Free eContent!
9. FREE eBooks from The eLearning Guild
10. e-LearningGurus 5-Minute Summaries
11. ICT in Schools: A Handbook for Teachers
12. E-Learning Concepts and Techniques
13. Coming of Age: An Introduction to the New WWW
14. Knowing Knowledge
15. Moodle E-Learning Course Development
16. Using Moodle
17. FREE Guide to Online Education
18. Informal Learning
19. Engaging Interactions For eLearning
20. The Cluetrain Manifesto
21. Stephen Downes Papers, Presentations and Books
22. KINEO Magic!
    
23. Learning Technologies (250+ Articles!)
24. Horizon Reports
25. Clives 33 Columns
26. Creating Learning Communities
27. Digital Education
28. Web-Teaching
29. Brandon Hall Free Resources
30. elearningeuropa Papers
31. Learning Circuits Field Guides
32. eLearn Magazine Articles Archive
33. EDUCAUSE Books
34. Google Book Search
35. Project Gutenberg
36. Scribd
37. LearnOutLoud.com
38. LibriVox
39. Great Books Index
40. CIA World Factbook
41. FreeBookSpot
42. FreeTechBooks.com
43. OnlineComputerBooks
44. Free-eBooks
45. ManyBooks
46. Globusz
47. BookYards
48. The Online Books Page
49. Wikibooks
50. Free eBooks
51. Free Online BookStore
    

SLIDEBOOM ROCKS!
SlideShare is still my favorite free slide-sharing site, but SlideBoom is quickly becoming my next favorite one. What do I mean? I will be using both from now on. For the sake of giving SlideShare a wake up call, here are five things I like about SlideBoom, which SlideShare currently lack (hopefully they will upgrade soon!):

1. First, you can upload PowerPoint 2007 files (.pptx), meaning you dont need to convert to PDF or .ppt before uploading (if you are using Microsoft Office 2007).
2. Your original presentation keeps its features after conversion, including content style, animation effects, transitions, embedded audio and embedded video. This is a major weakness in the existing version of SlideShare, which really annoys me. To keep my presentations intact, I have to upload them as a PDF file.
   
3. The uploading process is faster and more pleasant (well at least from my notebook and network). I suppose they have fewer users and uploads to manage. It will be interesting to see SlideBoom tackle this, when the user/viewer tsunami comes.
4. The presentation seems to run smoother in the browser, and you can even create annotations (using pen, highlighter, eraser, etc.) to any SlideBoom presentation to point out its key ideas.
5. The heart of SlideBoom is based on iSpring (An add-in PowerPoint to Flash converter), which enables you to convert PowerPoint to Flash offline, speeding up the process, while retaining the presentations original effects better.

Having said that, SlideBooms presentation size is currently limited to 30 MB (easy to upgrade!), while SlideShare enables 100 MB per presentation. In terms of users and presentation views, SlideShare still rocks big time! For example, the most viewed presentation (as of today) on SlideBoom is only 3100+, while SlideShares most viewed presentation is a whopping 1.6 million+.

In a slideshell, I will not give up on SlideShare just yet, but you never know in the future. Anyway, why not use both! Perhaps I should consider a third free alternative. Got any suggestions?

Oops! You might be wondering, "what happened to the 101 OER presentation I was talking about in the previous post?" Coming soon hopefully. What happened to your non-blogging vacation? Al-Hamdulilla, Ramadan awakens again my need to share amazing learning resources quickly.

Oops, one more juicy item! I have updated the 140+ free learning tools list with one more juicy learning problem solver (in addition to SlideBoom). Hint: Unlimited storage :)

• Security! PDFCreator can handle either security settings from AFPL Ghost above 8.14 or can use then program pdfenc from Steven Lee.
• Improved printer driver handling
• 2 new variables: OptionsEnable and OptionsVisible (a simple protection to save the options - useful for administrators) Set this variables manually in the file PDFCreator.ini to save the options.
• Email Clients: Succesfully tested with MS Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Eudora,
• Pegasus Mail (WsendTo.exe), The Bat!, Foxmail, Sylpheed-Claws, IncrediMail Problems with: Ak-Mail, GeMail, Postguard, Vivian Mail
• Add PDF document properties Keywords and Subject
• You can add printable files (also via Drag and Drop) and through the windows explorer context menu.
• Added Commandline parameter PF: Convert a printable file in a pdf document example: pdfcreator.exe -PF"c:autoexec.bat"
• Update check from PDFCreator Menu.

• Link to eLearning Guilds FREE eBooks

WHAT?
eBooks from The eLearning Guild are guaranteed to put a wealth of information at your fingertips! The Guild has two formats for eBooks. While each eBook is focused on one theme, some are collections of tips we gather from Guild members from around the world, and some are collections of articles from key industry leaders. In either case, youll find valuable information that you can use in your organization! Guild eBooks are FREE for everyone and Guild membership is not required to access them.

JUICE?
The eLearning Guilds currently available free eBooks:

• The eLearning Guilds Handbook of e-Learning Strategy
  Will help you make a broad, fundamental connection between learning, e-Learning, and your organizations mission, business objectives, and the bottom line. Chapters address everything from crafting a focused strategy, to keeping your strategy focused, to change management.
• 382 Tips on the SELECTION of an LMS or LCMS
  Is an awesome collection of tips from hundreds of your professional colleagues. These tips will help you navigate the LMS minefield, streamline your selection process, and help you save money! Nowhere will you find a more comprehensive set of tips that you can use to improve your LMS and LCMS selection efforts.
• The eLearning Guilds Handbook on Synchronous e-Learning
  Is intended for anyone and everyone who wants to produce, lead, or promote live, interactive learning events on the Web. Its packed with job aids, references, examples, and information to significantly reduce the amount of time required to produce online learning events.
• 339 Tips on the IMPLEMENTATION of an LMS or LCMS
  Is an amazing collection of tips from hundreds of your professional colleagues. Nowhere will you find a more comprehensive set of tips that you can use to improve your LMS and LCMS implementation efforts.
• 311 Tips on the MANAGEMENT of an LMS or LCMS
  Is an incredible collection of tips from hundreds of your professional colleagues. Why reinvent the wheel when you can learn from these tips on the management of your LMS or LCMS system! Nowhere will you find a more comprehensive set of tips that you can use to improve your LMS and LCMS management efforts.
• 834 Tips for Sucesssful Online Instruction
  Is a wonderful collection of tips from 336 of your professional colleagues. Nowhere will you find a more comprehensive set of tips that you can use to improve your knowledge and skills in online instruction.
• 162 Tips and Tricks forWorking with e-Learning Tools
  In October and November 2007, The eLearning Guild conducted a survey of its members, asking for their favorite tips for using software to create e-Learning. Members could submit tips in any or all of these five categories: Courseware authoring and e-Learning development tools, rapid e-Learning tools, simulation tools, media tools, and combining and deploying authoring tools.

Ouch, it really hurts when you discover such juice (Hmm, some of these eBooks have already been discovered somewhere in this blog!). I wish I had seven (7) brains (or reading/thinking processors) that could process (or decipher) all these eBooks at the same time. However, since I dont, I suppose sharing this discovery with all of you helps. Perhaps we can process these 7 eBooks together :)

• Link to World Digital Library
• Video - Experience the Vision (WDL)

WHAT?
The World Digital Library (WDL) will make available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials.

VISION?
Experience the technologies that will put visitors in touch with cultural heritage collections from around the world (Click the video link and you will be inspired!)

OBJECTIVES?

• Promote international and inter-cultural understanding and awareness;
• Provide resources to educators;
• Expand non-English and non-Western content on the Internet; and
• Contribute to scholarly research.

• UNESCO
• Bibliotheca Alexandrina
• International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA)
• The Library of Congress
• National Library of Brazil
• National Library and Archives of Egypt
• National Library of Russia
• Russian State Library

Since they are inviting other libraries, archives, museums, etc. around the world to participate, I suppose we will be seeing many more juicy partners joining in the near future.

Although, we only have the visionary video to enjoy for now, I certainly hope and believe this will be a successful project. Having Google onboard the team certainly increases the possibility of success, though it would also be great to see MSN and Yahoo getting involved. Yes, it would be great to see these three Search Giants (or Three Musketeers) working together on such a massive and noble project :)

Like Anything that comes for free, do not expect fancy printed manuals and CD-ROMs and technical support. Yet you can count on the community that uses these OS to provide you support through chat rooms and forums and mailing lists.

You will also note that the size of these OS range from 1 to 10 GB so if you don’t have decent broadband connection, paying for a DVD/CD-ROM might seem reasonable. Also if you are not that techie, some of these companies offer helpdesk and support contracts, which can be bought at a reasonable price.

FreeDOS

FreeDOS aims to be a complete, free, 100% MS-DOS compatible operating system (mostly achieved except Windows compatibility – Windows standard-mode works on FreeDOS, but 386-mode / WfW 3.11 does not.)

These days, there are three main uses for FreeDOS:

1. Running classic DOS games
2. Running business software that only supports DOS
3. Supporting embedded DOS systems, such as a computerized cash register or till

FreeDOS should run on any standard PC, but if you are new to DOS, we recommend you use a PC emulator to install and boot FreeDOS. You can find PC emulators for all computer platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac.) You can even run FreeDOS using a PC emulator written in Java, right in your web browser!

Click here to Download FreeDOS

RxDOS

RxDOS is a fast MS-DOS clone that supports very large disk drives, FAT32 volumes, and Windows 95/98 Long Filenames. its source code is also available free at sourceforge.

Click here to Download RxDOS

React OS

ReactOS is a free, modern operating system based on the design of Windows® XP/2003. Written completely from scratch, it aims to follow the Windows® architecture designed by Microsoft from the hardware level right through to the application level. This is not a Linux based system, and shares none of the unix architecture.

ReactOS had its origins in an older project known as FreeWin95. FreeWin95 aimed at being binary compatible with Microsoft® Windows® 95. It was founded by Yannick Majoros around 1996. But the development never took off substantially due to endless talks on design and thoughts of following the NT architecture.

The main goal of the ReactOS project is to provide an operating system which is binary compatible with Windows. This will allow your Windows applications and drivers to run as they would on your Windows system. Additionally, the look and feel of the Windows operating system is used, such that people accustomed to the familiar user interface of Windows® would find using ReactOS straightforward. The ultimate goal of ReactOS is to allow you to remove Windows® and install ReactOS without the end user noticing the change.

Please bear in mind that ReactOS 0.3.7 is still in alpha stage, meaning it is not feature-complete and is not recommended for everyday use.

Click Here to Download ReactOS

OpenSolaris

OpenSolaris is an operating system (OS), an open source project licensed under CDDL, and a community. The project’s goals are innovation, collaboration, and the extension of OpenSolaris technology.

OpenSolaris is free, open source, and well-suited for desktops, laptops, servers, and data centers. The quality requirement of OpenSolaris is perhaps best stated as Production Ready All The Time.

OpenSolaris technical communities maintain kernel and userland consolidations and launch new technology projects. OpenSolaris is developed by communities working in the different projects. Each project focuses on one or more specific areas of the system. The OpenSolaris developer project is sponsored by Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Click here to download OpenSolaris

Darwin

Darwin is the UNIX technology-based foundation of Mac OS X. Darwin integrates several technologies. Among the most important are 4.4BSD-based operating-system services (built on the Mach 3.0 microkernel), the I/O Kit, networking facilities, and support for multiple integrated file systems. Developers can use Darwin to port UNIX/Linux applications and create kernel extensions.

In addition to being part of Mac OS X, Darwin is a standalone, BSD-based operating system. (BSD, short for Berkeley Software Distribution, is a family of UNIX variants descended from Berkeley’s version of UNIX.)

Darwin is also occasionally used to refer to the Darwin Streaming Server, also known as the QuickTime Streaming Server (QTSS).

Click Here to download Darwin

FreeBSD

FreeBSD is an advanced operating system for x86 compatible (including Pentium® and Athlon™), amd64 compatible (including Opteron™, Athlon™64, and EM64T), ARM, IA-64, PowerPC, PC-98 and UltraSPARC® architectures. It is derived from BSD, the version of UNIX® developed at the University of California, Berkeley. It is developed and maintained by a large team of individuals. Additional platforms are in various stages of development.

FreeBSD offers advanced networking, performance, security and compatibility features today which are still missing in other operating systems, even some of the best commercial ones.

FreeBSD makes an ideal Internet or Intranet server. It provides robust network services under the heaviest loads and uses memory efficiently to maintain good response times for thousands of simultaneous user processes.

Click here to download FreeBSD

Debian Linux

Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer. An operating system is the set of basic programs and utilities that make your computer run. Debian uses the Linux kernel (the core of an operating system), but most of the basic OS tools come from the GNU project; hence the name GNU/Linux.

Debian GNU/Linux provides more than a pure OS: it comes with over 18733 packages, precompiled software bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on your machine

Click here to Download Debian

Fedora Linux

Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that showcases the latest in free and open source software. Fedora is always free for anyone to use, modify, and distribute. It is built by people across the globe who work together as a community: the Fedora Project. The Fedora Project is open and anyone is welcome to join.

Click here to Download Fedora

Koppix

KNOPPIX is a bootable CD or DVD with a collection of GNU/Linux software, automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices and other peripherals. KNOPPIX can be used as a productive Linux desktop, educational CD, rescue system, or adapted and used as a platform for commercial software product demos. It is not necessary to install anything on a hard disk. Due to on-the-fly decompression, the CD can have up to 2 GB of executable software installed on it. (over 8 GB on the DVD "Maxi" edition).

Click here to download Koppix

Mandriva

Mandriva Linux is a community-based Linux distribution, suitable for a wide range of situations from typical desktop use through development and server roles up to clustering.

Mandriva Linux is based on the Cooker development project sponsored by Mandriva. Hundreds of passionate free software developers work openly on the core of the distribution. This open, community-driven development system has been in place since 1998, making it one of the longest-standing open source development communities around. The involvement of the Mandriva development community helps us to make Mandriva Linux one of the largest, most up-to-date, integrated, internationalized and standardized distributions available.

Click here to Download Mandriva

Slackware

Slackware Linux is a complete 32-bit multitasking "UNIX-like" system. It’s currently based around the 2.6 Linux kernel series and the GNU C Library version 2.7 (libc6). It contains an easy to use installation program, extensive online documentation, and a menu-driven package system.

A full installation gives you the X Window System, C/C++ development environments, Perl, networking utilities, a mail server, a news server, a web server, an ftp server, the GNU Image Manipulation Program, Mozilla Firefox, plus many more programs. Slackware Linux can run on 486 systems all the way up to the latest x86 machines (but uses -mcpu=i686 optimization for best performance on i686-class machines like the P3, P4, Duron/Athlon, and the latest multi-core x86 CPUs).

Click here to Download Slackware

Ubuntu 10.4 LTS-Recommended

Ubuntu is a community developed operating system that is perfect for laptops, desktops and servers. Whether you use it at home, at school or at work Ubuntu contains all the applications you’ll ever need, from word processing and email applications, to web server software and programming tools.

Ubuntu is and always will be free of charge. You do not pay any licensing fees. You can download, use and share Ubuntu with your friends, family, school or business for absolutely nothing.

Click here to Download Ubuntu

Click here to Order a Free CD (Free Shipping anywhere on the planet)

PS: This is by no means a complete list of Free operating systems… but that is all for today folks… I will be updating this list through out this week. My aim is to make this the best resource for finding a free alternative to Microsoft Windows and other proprietary Operating systems.

http://www.ixibo.com/2009/01/list-of-free-operating-systems-download-now/