I count myself lucky to be able to run Linux at work. Of course, it helps to have a rock-solid case for it to take to management--I admin RH boxes, and putty is just too darn clunky to use productively across hundreds of servers.
I’m becoming a fan of Linux Mint.
I've heard good things about it, but have never seen it. The fact that it is based off of Ubuntu tends to scare me off. :)
However, I have to run as a VMware guest OS on a Windows 7 platform for now.
Run it full screen and do everything in your VM. See how long it takes them to complain. If they don't notice, you may be able to take that experience as part of your sales pitch to management. :)
My old company (IBM) had a Linux / RedHat build for the laptop. Upon rare occation, I had to run MS Project and MS Visio which I did so from a guest VM. The rest of my work was done on Linux via Open Office and local Linux clients.
I also was the only laptop that ran solid for 3 years without the need for local support - even though I traveled all over the globe. Other Windows members of my team were constantly having laptop problems.
I even built a bootable USB stick version that I could at least get into a “bad” laptop and recover files that customers needed.