As was mentioned by bighornsheep in
another post, Oracle provides a free version of their 10g database product to work with if you're a student, developer, or simply wanting to get some hands-on practice with the Oracle product, (much like
Microsoft's SQL Server Express). I thought I'd make a dedicated thread for those looking to work with Oracle databases and don't quite know where to start.
It's available for both Windows and Linux, download it here:
Oracle Database 10g Express Edition