Even I have Linux I use it very little, I took other approach to solve Micro$oft's crap.
Windows as an operational system by itself has some bugs, but these bugs hasven't too much importance, only time to time they make your application crash without any other big problem.
You can work with Poser all the day without any problem, only you need to restart Poser time to time, but this is due a Poser problem and not due a Windows problem.
What makes Windows a crap is not the operational system, is all the crap that is installed together with the Windows operational system. All this crap is not needed by the operational system, all this crap is not needed for the applications, but all this crap makes Windows a total mess subjected to any sort of virus, spies, malfunctions, slowiness and crashes.
The theory involved is very simple, if you take Windows and you remove all the associated crap leaving alone the operational system, Windows turns into something reliable and fast.
To have an idea of which is the crap that comes together with Windows you have: Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, Microsoft Office, Microsoft network, Messenger, Media Player, active desktop, any active X and a lot of dlls that you don't know for what it are, the only thing that you know if you remove these dlls nothing happens, all works normaly and the computer run faster!
You don't need any of this crap for running your applications and in case you need someone you can install Firefox,  Abode, OpenOffice and so on.
I don't use any kind of firewall or active anti-virus. Anti-virus I only use to scan a suspected downloaded file, files downloaded from Renderosity I never scan!
And I never had any problem with virus or any kind of data destruction.

Stupidity also evolves!