I downloaded this about 3 months ago because I wanted to tinker with some audio/video editing and graphics software but didn’t want to spend a ton of money. To be honest, I was a bit daunted at first by the OS, having never used Linux before. It took me a while to get the hang of it. But once I figured out the basics I was off and running. The layout is quite intuitive, and it has some really great features that you won’t find on Windows (I particularly like the “workspaces”) I can’t believe such an incredible tool (or rather, entire tool collection) is available for free. I use this stuff every week, both for work and personal use. The online forums are helpful, and many of the applications have tutorials right on the disk, or will link you to an online manual.

IMPORTANT TIP FOR NEW USERS: This took me forever to figure out. To open files stored on your hard drive, open the file manager (or the ‘open file’ dialog of the application you are using) and go to ‘file system’ -> ‘media’. Your hard drives will be listed as “sda1″ “sda2″ etc.

I would recommend puredyne to anyone is fairly good with computers and who would like to take advantage of some great software without investing a pile of money.