I tried Ubuntu (jaunty jackalope) on a spare system last year, and came away unimpressed. It offered no advantages over a decently set-up Windows rig, but there were serval disadvantages.
As for the usual complaints of viruses, defrag etc there are easy solutions. Get a decent defragger and an anti-virus software. For eg, the latest version of Diskeeper (2010) actually prevents most fragmentation automatically and defrags the rest automatically. Never have to worry about defragging. There are several very good anti-virus options, even free ones such as MSE or Avira work perfectly well unless the user does something really stupid.
One bigproblem with my Ubuntu install was that it simply refused to work well with my home network. Network speeds were consistently a fraction of my XP speeds, and despite spending 2-3 days, I could never solve the problem. Tried an older version, with limited success. It also lacked a decent torrent client. In a cruel twist of irony, I had to use utorrent in Wine lol.
Linux is free and feasible for home use only if your time is worth nothing and you don't mind giving up essential (to me atleast) utilities like Adobe CS4, MS Office etc.
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