Personally i've been using both windows and linux, set them up as a dual boot and things work pretty good. Keep in mind however that some of the current tools don't support hermes chips. I use slackware myself, works good and is quite configurable. As for software check out the howto here http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/ that'll get you up and running. I find it's a little easier to find wlans using netstumbler, then use linux to probe it harder then you can with windows. Works good if you happen to find any wep enabled ones.