"Things like ugly or fragmented interfaces are sometimes OK for analytic/engineering people, but they can ruin an artist's experience." Well, with Linux, any n

"Things like ugly or fragmented interfaces are sometimes OK for analytic/engineering people, but they can ruin an artist's experience." Well, with Linux, any number of interfaces and themes are available. There is even a 'windows' theme to reduce the migration curve. If you supply respectable hardware and GPUs, there should be zero issues with slowness or instantaneous feedback. Make sure the hardware platform works well with the distribution and its drivers. Ensure that your artists don't deal with these issues, and that your IT team pre-tests all builds and upgrades. I have no basis in reality for this suggestion, but I'd go with a lightweight window manager like LXDE rather than heavy weight gnome or kde. Less eye candy and straight functionality. And less drain on resources. Someone was talking about problems building on hardware. This isn't really an issue if you builds are automated: allows machines to be rebuilt on major upgrades. This, of course, requires that data drives and directories either be on separate partitions or on the network.