coLinux 
Another thing I have played with over the last month is coLinux. This is a mechanism for running a linux hosted on a Windows computer, so that users can have the best of both systems available.
I have downloaded the FC2 image and got it installed on saturn; however I can't make it see the main network. Getting it to even see the hosting Windows system was an exercise in reading the documentation precisely, as the wording is misleading if read quickly. On saturn, the Internet Connection Sharing mechanism for XP is mind-twistingly inconsistent, and the bridging (Win-PCAP) setup similarly strange. I read on the email list that performance through either is slow, in the order of 20-30Mb/s instead of the 100Mb/s that the hosting computer can do. (Probably some kind of limitation in Windows.)
Another project with promise, I suppose. Something to watch.