What computer do you use?

I recently upgraded my laptop and gave my well loved, but slower machine to my kids. I decided I wanted a 17" monitor (more room to see images and place pallets in Photoshop, etc.) I wanted to try an Apple, but a Macbook was out of my budget. After a bit of shopping around I found a deal on a Toshiba P200 that had tons of horsepower, 2GB Ram and all the trimmings. Unfortunately, it was preloaded with Vista. I say unfortunately now, but at the time I was anxious to try the latest greatest operating system..... I hated it..... I quickly installed Ubuntu as a dual boot to see if that would satisfy my needs...
I will admit there are a few rough edges. My webcam seems dodgy, and it took a bit to find a photo workflow that worked for me. Some help from this website, and a bit of research has brought me to the following method:

1. Raw files are downloaded to date organized folders. ie Year/Month/date or 2007/10/29
2. Since I have gnome raw thumbnailer installed, I can view and delete poorly composed or exposed images right in the file browser. This is a preliminary edit. just getting rid of the junk.
3. Anything that looks promising gets an initial tune-up in RawTherapee or Lightzone (unfortunately, Lightzone for Linux has been discontinued).
4. The next step is where I am having trouble. I haven't yet found a program I am happy with for fine and final retouching. I have tried the Gimp, but I just can't get comfortable with it. Cinepaint is supposed to be good, but again I can't seem to get comfortable. I tried Pixel but it seemed pretty buggy. Maybe it will get better...

So I am doing my final processing in Photoshop still running on a windows XP machine I keep running. I guess I still have some learning to do if I want to move away from windows...

one post per month?

Wow, a whole month has passed.
I went down to Port Angeles to visit a friend. We did some hiking and I ended up with these images...