I second this. I have switched from Windows 7 to Xubuntu and have never looked back. It runs smoothly on a X61 IBM Notebook with 4 GB RAM. If I have to use an expensive software suite that is only available on Windows/MacOS, I Switch to virtualized Windows 7 mashine.
In my experience, Wine is always worth trying first. Definitely good enough for quite a lot of production work with that one obscure Windows binary you absolutely need, in most cases.
