If Linux is open source should it even be capitalized?

My primary computer was this dell laptop that died over a year ago. The *expletive*s at dell wanted $400 for a replacement proprietary battery, which I wasn't going to shell out on an old Pentium III 866MHz laptop. I've been waiting to get a new machine. I'm actually going to wait until next year when Mac releases their intel based computers and decide then what to get. I'll either get a new PC (new windows operating system to be released next year), or I'll switch back to Mac (my first computer in the mid 80's was an apple IIc).
I've got another old computer that died as well, a desktop. I just tried to soup it up by swapping out the power supply (which had died), installing usb2.0 pci card and soundblaster 24bit audio card so I can do my concerts from minidisc to mp3 again (I'm way behind converting these since the laptop died). I also added a burner since it didn't have one. Unfortunately the os is a hacked version of windows xp from engineering school and something went wrong when I updated zone alarm (I suspect my system got hijacked). So now I'm trying to dl Linux because I don't want to give that *expletive* bill gates $100 for an os to run on a sub par computer. If you aren't thinking this too much information right now, I'm sure you're thinking macs are so much easier (it is my hope that may sway me back onto their side). I actually almost spent $660 dollars last night to avoid all this headache and by a pre-built box from bestbuy, but both Noel and the *expletive* salesperson scoffed at my selection of the emachines. I don't really care, just need something to get me to next year when I get something real nice. He was so proud of himself "if I were you I'd build it from scratch get this processor for $600, this motherboard, add this video card..." which Noel was all to impressed with. Look *expletive*, I've built computers before, you're not impressing me with your technical prowess, just ring me up for what I came here for: simplicity. Its highly priced these days apparently. They didn't even sell half the *expletive* that he was bragging about. They don't even sell processors there.
So I guess Linux has evolved since the operating systems course I took in 2002 because I can't get Red Hat Linux for free anymore but I can get Fedora. Apparently there are many others too but I'm partial to Red Hat since it was my first experience. Hm... May the best operating system win...