Red Hat's new Linux will have full multimedia capability AND be free
The upcoming Red Hat desktop product -- called Red Hat Global Desktop, I believe -- has been delayed due to licensing of the codecs needed to provide what is promised to be full support for multimedia, filling in the gaps of most free Linux products, the developers of which often don't include non-free software and usually won't pay royalties either.
But here's one thing I didn't know about the new Red Hat OS: it'll be free:
For some time, getting free and legitimate codecs for Linux has been a problem. While most distros make it very easy to download the codecs required to play proprietary media formats, these codecs are basically illegal in the US. It is possible to purchase legal codecs and most commercial Linux distros do include legal codecs, but there are still many users out there who will not bother to get legal codecs until they are free.