Downloading linux software
 

I am new to linux and for starters would like to know where the best places are to download linux software.

In particular, right now I would like to download Red hat (if it is free).

Welcome to the forums!

Red Hat costs $299/year and up, and the best (and only legal) place to download it is here: http://redhat.com

If you are new to Linux then I strongly suggest you start with a free, general-purpose, beginner-friendly distribution such as Mint or Ubuntu. Here is a good comparison of the top 10: http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major

I use Mint myself; it's very quick to get started with, and you can easily "test drive" it as a Live DVD or USB to see if you like it, before you install.

Generally, the best place to get a Linux distro is from that distro's own home page.

If you need something that is like Red Hat Enterprise Linux because you want to learn how to use RHEL, CentOS would be an excellent choice. Scientific Linux is based on RHEL, but more oriented to desktop usage.

Right here at LQ, there is a page that links to downloads and webpages for most major distros. http://iso.linuxquestions.org/