As far as I know there is a good version of Linux, with x-windows etc. Linux Redhat. I thought about buying it sometime ago. The price in US dollars is $49.95. That's cheaper than windows in my eyes.
Offered by Gerard.
RedHat 6.0, issued mid-1999, has a number of improvements on functions that had to be manually added/replaced to the 5.x distribution, now making it really workable and easy to use.
Offered by John.
I had the opportunity to install and play with a modern version of Linux (RedHat) and was very impressed. The only problem I ran into is that I have a WINModem and it couldn't work with it. But the release notes said so, so I didn't have to spend a lot of time finding that out the hard way.
Offered by Ron.