I had a computer die on me (or at least I thought it died). Anyway I bought a Vista OS based quad core and it actually seems to be running pretty well... Anyway on to the old PC. It turns out the video card was causing it to crash. The video card was overheating from lack of cooling. I replaced it with a video card I had laying around and it started working fine. Now with my operating system choice. I already have XP pro on laptop and Vista on the new PC so I installed Ubuntu Linux. I had a little bit of trouble with 2 things. Video resolution and dual sound card issues but after surfing around the Linux community had all the fixes I needed. I now am using GIMP for editing and love the fact that all of it is free and it supports most RAW formats with the right plugin. I am used to Adobe CS and was looking in to upgrading to CS3 but I will give GIMP a try for a while.
Yes I have that one bookmarked. I think I got it from another post in here somewhere. Might have been your post.
I tried using the gimp, could never get used to it. Personally I think I'd rather stick to Photoshop... XOver Office does a fine job running on my Debian box. I guess wine could work, look at this. http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name/ If you can stick with the Gimp, try the Gimpshop mod, makes it look like Photoshop http://plasticbugs.com/?page_id=294