Penguins are taking over...

After trying Xandros (the Linux distribution formerly known as Corel) in my office on Monday, chaoswolf promptly insisted that I install it on her new laptop. Done.

It's based on Debian, giving it a huge collection of packages and a world-class package manager. Highly recommended, and even worth paying for (they don't have free downloads; if you're broke, get someone to help you with Debian if you haven't installed it before).
( installation notes )