Linux Media Centre Edition was released on the 15th of March. There's a video comparison between LinuxMCE and WindowsMCE, and while it may be fairly biased (since it's made by the LMCE guy - he sounds pretty damned smug in the video), LMCE still looked to be all over WMCE as far as ease of use, intelligence and among other things, looks go.

For a free, open source solution to your home entertainment/spare media PC needs, it certainly looks pretty decent. The install process might seem a bit convoluted (there's a whole three parts to it!).

It needs Ubuntu 6.10 installed first which you can get from official mirrors here. Then there's LMCE itself which you can find on the list of mirrors here. And then (strangley enough) you'll need the installer, which you can find here (or also on some of the mirror sites).

Now all we need is someone local to give it a crack and let us know what it's really like. Any volunteers?