re: Ok, Linux Geeks
I've no experience with it myself (sadly), but there's as fellow at work who swears by a distro called "Puppy," which he claims is both very capable and versatile. It'll apparently boot from pretty much anything, including a CD of course, but also a flash drive (if your bios is cooperative, of course).
Keep us posted. I'm slowly severing the umbilical that's kept me tied to windoze as well. Right now that involves moving from .NET to Python for my personal programming projects, but maybe someday Linux will be in the mix. Maybe someday soon.