Excluding one category from Home Page

I'm hoping to exclude link posts from the front page, boy have them show on a separate category page. The second part is easy via a category menu item. But the first part, excluding one post type, that is proving very tricky.

I know there are ways to do this by setting a static home page, but I really don't want to do that. I've seen it done before, but can't work it out myself. Anyone?

Thanks