So I'm a bit tired of windows 8, it eats the internet like you won't believe andjust yesterday I had to do a disk ceanup of almost a 100 GB!
You will find Linux distro's are quite a bit easier on your hard drive.
I feeling a bit anxious doing the dual boot set-up
Be careful. it'll probably require you to resize an existing windows partition and there be dragons there. Backup everything before you start (a small mistake here means data death), and install Linux on a new hard drive.
There's this virtual box thing you can download to try out various other OS
Works like a charm. I use it frequently.
Is it worth it to try Linux?
Yes. But it also depends on what you want to do with it. If it involves DTP or video manipulation, CAD, etc... it may not be worthwhile. If you just need web and office-like functionality, go for it.
... Linux distros and others like BSD and Debian
Just a point of clarification. Debian and Ubuntu are both Linux distros. BSD isn't, it's a different operating system, it's not Linux at all.
some say Debian is the best
There is no best, the different distros serve different needs. But I am in the camp that prefers Debian-based distro's. Like Ubuntu (which is actually based on Debian). I myself use Kubuntu, a slightly different version of Ubuntu based on KDE, a slightly different (and imho more snappy) destkop environment. It's all personal preference really.
and Linux is totally unreliable.
Bullshit. A huge chunk of the internet runs on Linux because it's rock solid. It doesn't do the "windows thing" of deciding at 12pm to shut down and install updates while you were running that critical data-analysis you need tomorrow. The PC I'm typing this on has been up, crash free, for just more than 25 days:
XXXXX@XXXXX:~$ uptime
13:54:59 up 25 days, 4:13, 9 users, load average: 0.24, 0.35, 0.36
That number has been in the 100's before, and that includes updating the software on the machine regularly.
As for the whole sourceforge thing... yeah, usually the Ubuntu repository will have everything you need. You don't NEED the command line, but you will never regret learning it and appreciating the power it gives you.