The Linux kernel is distributed under the GNU General Public License. How to Get Started. There are a handful of major Linux distributions. For information about them, and how they are installed, see Matthew Welsh's Installation and Getting Started , or IGS for short. The information in IGS is somewhat dated now.
Commercial distributions are available from book and electronics stores.
Some hardware vendors now ship systems with Linux pre-installed. Some distributions can still be installed via anonymous FTP from various Linux archive sites, but in many cases, the size of the distribution makes this impractical. There are also a large number of releases which are distributed less globally that suit special local and national needs. The latest stable release is 0.98.3. Work has been progressing on an emulator for Microsoft Windows binaries.