Express Bits (Score 2, Informative)

Yes.. All of the express bits have been free since their intial announcement about 5 months ago. These bits are designed for the hobbyist and will be freely available once VS2005 is offically released with the agreement that they cannot be used for commecial development.

While they have not been designed to run on Linux the code you write may run, and it possibly these will run to if you are determined enough to find a solution