Livre d'Or

My first question would be 'why do you want a laptop, when this keeps happening?' - yes, they are portable, but you are paying more for something that isn't as good, is much harder to upgrade, and more likely to break / get stolen - but...

I am another one running Xbuntu (Ubuntu set up to use XFCE from the start) on two netbooks. The desktop has Linux Mint (based on Ubuntu, but with some more sensible choices) using the MATE desktop (if you are used to XP, you would be right at home!)

For running Photoshop, see this - he has set up a virtual PC in Linux, installed XP on it, then install Photoshop in that.