Purchase less expensive Dell refurb towers and laptops and load them with Linux Mint.
That's exactly what I did, and… I love it, but I still can't work without Photoshop, Lightroom & InDesign. GIMP simply isn't enough.
But I hope some future version of Wine will allow me to forget Windows :)
If you are using photoshop for image manipulation... GIMP is catching up.
But, if you are using photoshop to draw, Krita is a LOT better, and getting better.
Inkscape is still a bit clunky, but I am sure it will overtake InDesign.
But, when you use those big software packages for a living, it is really hard to transition out of them.
As far as I know, Inkscape is vector drawing app that takes on Illustrator.
InDesign does not have any competition. QuarkXpress is dead.
I never used Photoshop for drawing because it doesn't have a minimum of controls. It's a painting program, and not drawing. Still it's by a large margin ahead of GIMP in photo manipulation :(
For Krita I didn't even heard. I might check it on your recommendation.
Thank you.
Great minds think alike @lighteye - I'm a HUGE fan of Mint - it's not hard to see why it's the #1 distro on http://distrowatch.com/