I would love to drop Microsoft, but until you can design shit easier in Linux, that ain't gonna happen.
GIMP is very promising, but will need to go thru at least 6 or seven more releases before it even begins to offer a alternative to Photoshop
With WinXP, I have been running for about 5 weeks now without reboot, and a simple registry tweak allows you to open as many threads as you liek (windows default is set at 15)
Yes Linux is sweet in how little resourses it uses, but it is still in it's infancy, and most of us are not going to even consider switching, until Linux offers equal or better productivity, especially in the graphics/music creation areas.
