Tony Cooper
It seems that only Floyd has kept the original poster's question in mind. The poster didn't ask what OS or what software would be an improvement on what he has. He asked what can be done to work with what he has.

Floyd - presumably - did a good job in answering this. I say "presumably" because I use neither Linux nor Gimp and don't know how practical Floyd's response was.

Floyd L. Davidson
Neither GIMP nor Linux was a problem, and the problem he had would be exactly the same under Windows or OSX.

nospam
nonsense.

that is absolutely, without question, completely and utterly false.

the more you comment on photoshop, mac and windows, the more clear it is you know absolutely nothing about any of them.

Floyd L. Davidson
Of course since you haven't got a clue what his problem was, your comments are nonsense. Nothing new at all there either...