My personal laptop "dual-boots" Ubuntu (Feisty Fawn) Linux and WinXP Pro. Also at work I administer numerous servers running various flavors of Linux in a test lab environment. I can tell you that Linux is a very stable, robust operating system that is for all intents and purposes considered to be free of the malware problems mostly due to the low numbers of Linux desktops and laptops out there. The look and feel is not a lot unlike Windows and transitioning to Linux from Windows would be a lot like transitioning from Windows to Mac. Another benefit is free software such as "Open Office" which does pretty much what the Micro$oft Office products do. The only possible downside is your new Linux box might not support your existing peripheral devices (printers, scanners, etc.) and when you buy new ones you will need to do some homework to make sure there is software (drivers) available for Linux.

Hope this helps,

Regards,
Bill