I'm looking for some advice. I am an illustrator, and right now I'm running Debian Sarge (dual boot with WinXP) on an HP zt3000 laptop. I'd like to switch over to linux, and I was wondering if there's anyone out there who uses their linux box almost exclusively for graphics, and how they have it set up. I'm in the process of recompiling my kernel and am curious if there are any kernel patches or the like that are geared towards graphics professionals that I haven't found. I guess kerneltrap.org would be the place to start, but I'd really love some pointers from any artists around.

Secondary question - has anyone gotten Corel Painter 9 to work in linux, whether via CrossOver's software or Wine? From what I've heard, it can't be done.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Yep, there are quite a few pro artists using Linux. Typically they use Gimp, Blender, Inkscape. These apps are sometimes not quite as mature as the windows equivalents but these days are pretty good (eg the guys who draw the icons use the Gimp).

Corel Painter 9, check the appdb.winehq.com site, we have one guy who uses an app called "Painter 5", maybe it's the same Painter? He works on tablet support in Wine so I guess that version at least works OK.

Corel Paint 9 will not work with the new kernels as it was a Windows/wine conversion for Linux and was ported when Corel got briefly involved with their own Debian based Linux a few years ago It was based on the 2.2 kernel and relied on that gcc version. I tried as I really liked Corel Paint.

I think inkscape and gimp is pretty good... but I am not a pro... I am using them just to design images for some non-profitable websites and logos...

I tried to play with blender before but it is too professional for me so I couldn't find out how to use it properly... maybe you are up to the standards

Good luck

And in fact you can do everybody a flavour by posting your solutions to this question when you found them, too
Then more ppl might be more interested in linux...