Ubuntu: I'm a noob

[Freakin]

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what's the advantage in running something like ubuntu? (or, for that matter, another linux implementation?)

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Free, generally very stable, highly configurable, and a huge selection of free software generated by the people, for the people.

It's also much more effecient with hardware, so you can do a lot more with a lot less. I think it's also better at multitasking than Windows.

[CompatiblePoker]

Like was said above it won't run Windows files but quite a few poker sites have Java based poker software which works fine. Party Poker has it and so does Absolute Poker, Pacific Poker, and all the Ongame/Bwin sites.

[Neko]

I use Linux exclusively for work/developing, but really needed a windows box for poker, interfacing with my mp3 player and all the other stuff only available on windows. I ended up building a pretty sweet rig with a quad core and 4 gigs of ram. I installed XP natively then installed ubuntu using VMware. I allocate half my ram and 2 processors to the ubuntu virtual machine and it runs fast enough that you wouldn't really know it wasn't running natively. I leave the virtual machine running maximized on a 2nd desktop so I can flip instantly from Windows to Linux and effectively have two computers running all the time.

Might be something to consider if you want to play around with Linux. Truthfully though, if you don't have a good reason to switch to Linux or are really interested in learning about it you're probably just going to end up using Windows all the time.