I'm a huge Linux advocate, but I'm at the point where, if it doesn't work, I don't bother. There are enough excellent distributions that do work, and there's no point in beating my head against the wall with something that doesn't do what I want. Been there, done that, and don't want to do it again.

That said, my PC runs Windows, because that's what music applications run better under. I'm in an IT shop, and a lot of my co-workers have gone with Macs when they want things to "just work". There's a lot to be said about guaranteeing a level of hardware compliance. If I had the money, I'd probably have a Mac... Well, except that the Mac version of BIAB lags a bit behind.

As for free/cheap photo editing software, have you checked out Google's Picasa? It's web-based, and you don't need to load a Windows client if you don't want to. There's an option to edit with Creative Kit, a Flash-based photo editor. The free version only offers basic features, but it's simple to use.

There's a list of free photo editor programs here that you might want to look at. GIMP has a bit of a learning curve. I've heard good things about Paint.NET, but haven't tried it for photo editing.

I just got an email for the [http://www.magix.com/us/xara-photo-graphic-designer/detail/]Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 2013[/url] which includes "The Magic Erase logarithm", so it's got to be good!

-- David Cuny
My virtual singer development blog

Vocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?