Most 'professional' software for 3d and graphics is geared towards Windows and OSX so options are limited / under-developed for Linux but it's enough to get the job done. I used to use photoshop in Wine but the window layering was all sorts of whacky. Now I use it inside a virtual machine to avoid such ridiculousness.
GIMP is okay... but it's missing some key things like the folder hierarchy in layers and BLENDING OPTIONS. HOLY SHIT, GIMP NEEDS BLENDING OPTIONS! (yes I know there are plugins but the do not compare).
When it comes to code... Linux by far and large is superior. I have near unlimited access to traversing and searching my files through the terminal or a wide array of scripting languages that _just_work_. My new favorite IDE,
www.geany.org is magic on Linux. Writing code on Windows was a bit like pulling teeth at times. While my IDE of choice, notepad++ (
http://notepad-plus.sf.net) made life easier, I still didn't have everything linux has to offer. Windows leaves you feeling locked in, while Linux always has a way... it just depends on how hard you want to work for what it is you want.
Long story short, getting windows to do all these things I have below would cost me much more in performance, I'd have to run some bulky third party applications and things still wouldn't look or act as good as they do on linux.
Theming is a big deal for me because I spend a lot of time on the computer and the WHITE based themes are blinding over an extended period of time. For the applications I use, there is only a small percentage of things that don't theme properly... but again, this is fixable... if I want to dive into the inner workings of gnome.
I'm not going to pretend like Linux doesn't have its downfalls because it does so crazy/annoying stuff sometimes but I can always seem to diagnose and work through the problem relatively pain free... unless of course it's just a total failure... like many video editing programs currently available for linux.