From ObjectShare, you can download education versions for free. See their Educational Program page with knowledge of smalltalk downloads (Intel Windows NT/'95, Power Mac, and Linux platforms). I have not played with these versions to see how different it is from the one we purchased below.
At CSU Chico, we will be using ParcPlace's VisualWorks 2.5. We have a site license to run it on the HP-9000 Series 300/400 & 700. Thanks to Bentley Nevada we also have this site license for Windows. And, thanks to Lawrence Livermore Labs, we also have one for Macs. Under our license, you (if you are enrolled in the class as a satellite student) may get this from us to use for the purposes of the class.
For satellite students, to have access to our machines you need a new account. Using this you can directly use ftp. OR without an account, you can use anonymous ftp (ftp.ecst.csuchico.edu) (IP address: currently 132.241.1.55 but the particular IP address could change over time). Then once here, to get the HP version, go into directory /users/amk/smalltalk/visualworks. The file is visual.tar.gz (obviously, gzipped). You will want an account here anyway - since many of you might be behind firewalls so you need to submit your labs at our website.
Additional files at /users/amk/smalltalk/visualworks include files in PCVersion, MacVersion
and GT.
For direct ftp access look here
We also now have the newest version called VisualWave which includes the smalltalk environment and a web builder environment and (for PCs) the Parts for Java (same environments but for java programming) at /users/amk/smalltalk/visualwave.
(Also, I had a student, who connected to our system running LINUX as a dumb terminal, say all works fine - thus no need to download the HUGE file.)
Discussion on Smalltalk products
Java will run on all platforms. See the SUN site and what to run on