Quote - What about a dual boot with XP X64 on one partition and Linux on the other? Would that work?

That was the solution I finally came too - I tried out a few different linux distro's using Virtual Box first, just to see which would suit my needs best, finally decided on Ubuntu 64 Desktop.

I'm a long time debian fan, but debian is pretty conservative with there update cycle and I wanted some of the newer bells and whistles.  Also, to do a dual boot with debian required that I setup a partition for it first, then install, whereas Ubuntu's partitioner made it falling off a log easy to repartition the drive and shrink the windows partition down a bit to make room for Ubuntu.  It wanted a lot more of the partition by default than I actually gave it, but 20 gig seemed sufficient for my needs to start with since I'm using it primarly for software development atm, provided I can get FAST going the way I'd like eventually I'll be able to remove windows from my system all together, but for now a small linux partition seemed like the way to go.

I was also fairly impressed that ubuntu found and allowed me to install the drivers for my Nvidia card with very little fuss, something most other Linux distro's do not do because the cards drivers are not "free" software and as such are treated, well honestly with a sort of mild distain by many in the Linux community and many of those that maintain distro's. 

But Ubuntu made it pretty easy to install everything and get it up and running, I really like it's package management system (it's debian based), no hassles with library versions like you so often run into with RPM style packages.

But I would recommend you download virtual box and install the 32 bit desktop of Ubuntu first, play with it a bit and see if it's your cup of tea before going the dual boot route.  Linux is a lot like Moutain Dew - there are a ton of flavors available and not everyone drinks the same thing.  Personally I'm a big fan of regular old MD - whereas my daughter prefers a flavor called "livewire", which tastes a lot like carbonated Tang to me (in other words, ick!).

So my best recommondation is to install virtual box and check out a few distros, the most popular and best supported are probably Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE, and of course Debian.  That way you can create some virtual harddrives, see what you like and which of the distro's you think will best suit your needs.  Once your done just uninstall Virtual box and delete the virtual drives (they will show up as files under windows that you can easily delete with windows explorer) and then install your distro of preference as a dual boot.

-Never fear, RenderDog is near!  Oh wait, is that a chew toy?  Yup. ok, nevermind.. go back to fearing...