1 - technical - is it possible to load >1 distros of linux?
Yes. Try to put /home on a different partition so you can share your files/personal configs between distros.
Also ensure that your username->UID mapping is same on all distros. Do this by editing the /etc/passwd file after creating the new (non-root) users. (You DO create a non-privileged user, don't you?)
2 - how many of v luggers have been able to completely do away with M$ OSes and its array of applns - IE, Office, etc? personally, i run win2k and rh7.1 ... but routine chores happen on M$ ... are most luggers that way ... or am i in the minority here? it would be great to get some stats on this esp fm people who belong to a staunch linux community ...
I do most of my regular work on Linux. However, I do use M$ for wordprocessing and games.
I have never used IE even on Windows (although I have run it under Linux with Wine, just for kicks)... I use Opera
AbiWord is decent for basic stuff like hacking out a simple letter etc., but is really very inadequate for anything beyond that. I haven't used Kword. I used to use StarOffice 5.2 for a while but it was very slow and buggy. Anything slower and buggier than M$ software is a VERY bad piece of software. I haven't used the latest staroffice, though.
For image editing, The Gimp rocks. X-Fig is great for drawing figures. Its got a rather tacky and kludgy interface but is very powerful if you spend 30 mins figuring it out.
X-CD Roast is generally adequate for burning CDs, but can't write multisession CDs
E-mail handling is miles ahead on *nix than anything Billy Boy can ever dream of.