I took my OLD laptop, several months ago, and set up the dual boot for UBUNTU - sweet!  I may set it up with the plug in to cut from Inkscape, just to try.  This thing is literally 10 years old, so it won't win any speed awards.  But, the big change is my daughter's laptop.  She has one of those cheap inexpensive Toshiba from Wal Mart and downloads any and everything - yup massive virus.  None of the protections  we had would fix it, so I went with a blast-reinstall.  ...Hers did not come with disks...  (I would recommend verifying possession of disks BEFORE blasting a computer.)  So I made the UBUNTU boot disk, installed it, and WOW.  A two year old computer with UBUNTU is a screamer!  Inkscape is part of their down load website - as well as other CAD programs that I may be jealous of.  Her comment was, "as long as I can get on the WEB, I don't care what  you put on it."  I should add, Open Office lets her do her school work, and you can download just about anything needed for free.

I know most of you "know" about doing this, but it really is easy - if I can do it, you surely can.  So, if you have an old box that just sits in the basement (and you know you do), trying this may be a great alternative to a new expenditure.