Alright, calling my Linux machine a "workstation" is a bit of a stretch, since it's my general purpose desktop with functions ranging from watching movies, web-serving and last but not least, and certainly the most relevant to this forum, Image processing.
I'm not a blind and rabid Microsoft/Windows hater, but I do hate non-efficient software and that's what, in my view, Windows is. Cutting a long story short, my recently upgraded machine to dualcore and 2GB RAM wasn't getting the most use out of Windows XP. Memory handling and SMP (multi-CPU) performance is simply miserable on that OS, so I waited for Vista. Vista is a huge disappointment for me. Bloat++
I went and invested in a Macbook Pro to be used as my work-only machine while the desktop got converted to Linux, all I needed from Windows was Photoshop and Lightroom anyway, and OS X gives me that. Alright, done with the background fill-in.
After testing for 3 months, I finally settled on Ubuntu Linux, I'm on 7.04 now and the OS is simply fantastic! It just works, and works very well at that. Blazing fast is my Athlon X2 4600+ now and the 2GB of RAM is handled very well indeed.
I use Bibble Pro 4.9.8 for RAW workflow and batch processing; even though I have Lightroom on the Mac, I still wanted a professional quality RAW workflow application for the Linux machine for processing images I shoot for myself and not work.
Screenshot for the screenshot junkies:
And when I need to do some re-touching type work or anything that bibble won't do, I use Cinepaint, a bit spartan in use, but very effective. Also found a Picasa type photo organizer in F-Spot Photo Manager, an excellent application.
I started a thread some months back asking about Linux and it's viability as a desktop OS for good image processing. While I think Linux still has ways to go before it can be a complete professional solution on it's own, in that regard; it has, however, come a LONG way since I last tried to switch over (a couple of years ago).
Besides image processing, other aspects are now very nice on a Linux desktop, the only place where it needs to improve is gaming, but I don't play games much anymore so that's not a concern for me.
Just wanted to share this with those that might be interested in Linux or are using it already.
side-note: I'm no stranger to Unix/Linux, been a FreeBSD fan since 1999, but FreeBSD is more a server than anything else so I stick to Linux on the desktop.
Cheers!
-Asad