I run Slackware on my laptop exclusively. It's an elegant system, it stays out of the way, and you can customize it to no end. I'm in love with this system.
The thing is, I REALLY care about
free software, so eventually I want to move away from the plain linux kernel and use linux-libre (no binary drivers in the kernel, all source is available) on a completely free system like gNewSense or Trisquel.
You might think that's a bit extremist, and in fact I would be actually
losing some of the technical abilities of my current linux system. Since I value the freedom of the software more than its powerful functions (binary drivers), it's a compromise I'm glad to make!
Now, of course for work there's no way they're dropping Visual Studio 2010 (it's an awesome IDE, easiest one I've used!) so I still have to deal with the proprietary world every once in a while.