So I finally broke down and added Ubuntu as a secondary OS. I've used the live version before and have had other people install it as an alternative to MS Windows. So far, so good. I'm having a bit of trouble with Automatix but that can be solved.
I like the fact that, since I'm coming from a UNIX background, things make sense most of the time. I never really liked Windows as I didn't really know what was going on behind the scenes. I think I'll play around some more before porting stuff like mail over to this. Plus, I only have an 80 GByte disk so I don't have a whole lot of room.
I've been using XP on my desktop for years now but I had this fear of a dual-boot for a long time. I've been half-hoping that XP would blow up and I'd have a reason to go full-on Ubuntu. I decided to read up on the 'hows' of it and did it yesterday. The partition manager was a bit unclear and my pulse did go up a bit when I finally crossed the point of no return and (potentially) risked my XP installation. XP does want to check the disk when I boot into it but I'm not sure if I should let it.