About a month ago when I was messing around with Linux, I took advantage of a free service from Canonical, the company somewhat behind Ubuntu, which has skyrocketed in the past five years to become pretty much the closest thing to a mainstream Linux distro. That free service is having free copies of Ubuntu shipped to you on CDs. It's really 100% free; you do not pay shipping or anything.
The last time I tried to order Ubuntu CDs was in 2004, when Ubuntu was just starting. I couldn't believe that a Linux 'company' could give away free CDs and still exist in the following months. I also thought at the same time that while I would apply for the CDs. months would pass and I would soon forget about them, and would never receive them.
I was astonished back in 2004 when I received a small package one day, and inside was around 20 of the Ubuntu CDs and a notice to pass them out to friends.
Fast forward to 2008; the service is still around, but this time they didn't send me 20 CDs. Instead, I received one Ubuntu 8.10 CD in a nice little folder, along with four Ubuntu stickers. The CD was shipped from the Netherlands.
Honestly I was once again surprised that I received the CD (and so quickly too). If you want to get your own Ubuntu CD and stickers mailed to you for free, you can sign up here.
I can't believe the people behind Ubuntu can do this. They even go as far as have a tracking page for you to check on the status of your requested free CDs. For example;
1 CDs requested on 2008-11-26. 1 CDs were approved and sent to the shipping company on 2008-12-01. Please note requests usually take from 4 to 6 weeks to deliver, depending on the country of shipping.
