most are free.. i know after novell bought suse, they now charge like $80 for home use. redhat has always offered it free for dl but has been pushing you to buy offering tech support and pretty much scaring anyone else offering rh9 isos for sale or dl. just seems like they have been slowly moving torwards a full retail product. now to kill the confusion rh free is now fedora and you have to pay for rh "enterprise linux." lots of ppl don't have broadband so downloading isos totally is out of the question, your alternative is to purchase the distros, paying for the cost of duplication and the physical cds themselves..not the media on them, thats free.