If you’re interested in Open Source GIS and especially QGIS, I highly suggest you give the blog “Under Dark” a read - the author seems to be very clued in the latest developments, and the blog is very active.

I was talking to some friends at school tonight, and I realized what a barrier it can be to actually get some of the open-source geospatial tools I’ve talked about on this blog going. So I’m going to start a series about how one can get started with these tools, from a level-zero technical knowledge (of course, I assume basic GIS knowledge—if you know what I mean when I say buffering, geocoding and vector analysis, you’re fine).

**Update 2012-02-02 17:57 -0800:I just wrote a post about another way to do this. I really like QGIS. It’s a powerful GIS that runs on Linux (among other operating systems) and doesn’t require incredible amounts of CPU. One criticism I had of it was that it did not provide the same ‘click-and-go’ basemap experience one can get with ArcGIS for making simple maps (i.e. Add Basemap, select Bing, DeLorme, &c. and you’re done).