I've installed Linux versions in the past and played with them, but I have to admit that this is really awesome. They've really come a long way since about 2 years ago. I installed it and it recognized every piece of hardware I had in my system. The OS is rock solid and all the software is free! Open Source ROCKS! Wow! This is too cool. I might just start using this from now on. I'm really impressed.
http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/ftp.php3 Check out SCREENSHOTS! http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/fscreenshots.php3
if you're curious but don't want to go through with a full install or dualboot - take a look at Knoppix. an extremely impressive project: http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html
Matlab runs on Linux. I'm hoping somebody writes a bang up stock trading/system development front end for it. There is only a little stuff so far.
The only problem I'm having so far is that Linux takes a little getting used to. I downloaded some things in a .gz and .tar extension and I had no clue how to work them. I then found out they were compressed files, so I ran tar -x(??) filename.tar and extracted it. Then I was left with a bunch of files that ended in .c and .h and a few files with no extensions. I assumed they were executable. So I tried to run them and it said I didn't have permissions. Right now I am pretty clueless. I learned that SU gets me over to root and then I can do anything (including really fu**ing up the system). The documentation said I had to run "make" or something, but I'm not sure how it all works. What I need to do is find a really good website for linux newbies that will give me a crash course on all of this stuff.
When I installed Mandrake, it installed LILO or something that allows me to dual-boot into Windows when I need to. That way if I get totally stuck I can use Windows some more until I learn more about Linux. It is really quite nice how it is setup.