I have been through this. . ..

You have a wonderful choice and do not realise it. .

Install Linux. . .Ubuntu. . .(that way you have a virus protected system).

Then. . .

Download VMWare Player. . .It is absolutely free, will run about any operating system out there that *I* know of.
There is NO duel boot, You have instant access to Windows OR Linux. It is free, And they work seemlessly together.

I am a programmer for a large company, and i wanted Linux. They ran only windows operating systems. I ended up loading
Ubuntu, used VMware (Virtual box will probably work also, but I have not tried it) for running Windows XP AND Windows 7, and
never have to reboot again. flawless and wonderful. . .even under Embarcadero C/C++ compiler.

And to top it off? I am a Newbe with very little experience in the Linux world!

Stay away from Wine. It is not worth the trouble. I tried that for a while, but some things it would not run.
Not only that, it creates a artifical C drive to run off of. There is nothing wrong with that, but if you are going to create such things, you may as well use a program like VMware or Virtual Box that *will* run your windows stuff reliably on a C drive, and have a full operating system on top of it, to your accessibility!

With the above said. . .Wine is a nice product for a occasional Windows program.

I wish you the best of luck!