Photoshop -> Krita (you're using it for painting, right?)
Nuke -> Nuke.
3dsmax -> Blender, Maya, Houdini, etc
AE -> nothing... everything AE does the above programs can do better
Krita and Blender had booths (next to each other) at Siggraph a couple of weeks ago.
EDIT: Distro? As an industry insider, I can tell you that CentOS is widely used.