Actually Bitt, you have just reminded me of the other part to my fuzzy question.
I use XP now, but I have just added another disk so I can install Linux.
My server has been running linux forever, but I have never got around to using it as a workstation.

Having the same functionality on my linux workstation would be really cool. I have the feeling that gimp would prefer running in that environment as well.

For what it's worth, my current pipeline looks something like this.

I use ZoomBrowser with an external USB card reader only so far as to import pictures into directories named with the date. I then convert the RAW images to JPEG and exit ZoomBrowser.

Second, I rename the directory to something more useful (e.g., from "2004_04_02" to "2004_04_02 - Beautiful Sunrise"), such that it will still sort numerically, but will also give me a clue as to what's inside.

Third, I use ACDSee or sometimes the Windows XP built-in photo browsing stuff to look through pictures, and Photoshop to dork with them. I've recently upgraded to Photoshop CS, which includes its own visual browser that understands CRW files. Adobe's Camera Raw plug-in looks to be a much better RAW converter than Canon's, so I'll use that if I'm for some reason unhappy with Canon's default JPEG conversion.

Then, when I've nearly filled my 1GB card, I'll copy it directly to a burned CD with the same DCIM subdirectory and associated cruft. This means that ZoomBrowser is entirely happy pretending that these burned CDs are really just memory cards if/when I ever put them back into the machine.

There are plenty of other tools out there if I was willing to shoot JPEG, but if you're into RAW, then you need tools that understand it. Since I only minimally use ZoomBrowser, it works well-enough for me that I don't feel the need to get BreezeBrowser or some other commercial tool. Photoshop and ACDSee do all the heavy lifting I need.

Out of curiousity, since many people here seem to sort their images the same way, what do you do when you take pictures of two completely different events in the same day?

different events in the same day?

Generally, I create two different directories:

2004-04-09 Event A
2004-04-09 Event B

I generally organise my photos into Parties, Holidays, etc. as well, which works for me.

My pipeline looks like this:

1. Get the photos off of the camera. I don't care how. Generally I'll use a CF reader. Sometimes I'll use ZoomBrowser.
2. Organise them into directories. I don't worry too much about orientation at this point.
3. Upload them to Gallery, using either Gallery Remote or the Windows XP Publishing Wizard. Sometimes (if it's not many photos) I'll use the Gallery upload form.
4. Further organise and rotate them once they're in Gallery. It uses jhead and jpegtran for all the things that I'm interested in.

I've played with Gallery, and found it useful for splatting a large number of photos online. It's not as satisfying as custom web pages, of course. One of the features of newer Photoshop versions is that you can select the images you care about, in the Browser thing, and say "make me a web page" and it does everything, resizing, HTML generation, even color space conversion (e.g., from Adobe RGB to sRGB). My "new" pipeline for web production is probably going to be using Adobe's tools to generate its web page, but then I'll throw out Adobe's HTML and write my own for the summary screen (and my shell scripts will write wrappers for the zoomed-in images).

Haven't played around with it much myself yet, but just thought i'd throw this one out there:
http://www.iview-multimedia.com/products/index.html#Media

I've been watching Rob use this with his D2H and he seems to love it. As soon as i get my Mac i'll be looking into it more.

Thats what I love about this place (meaning the BBS)
I had never considered the file copy thing a problem, of course my camera then couldn't do it so it never arose. Now that my G5 can let met directly copy files is when I am considering the options.
And lots of you guys out there have already been there.

As luck would have it, one of my friends has just donated an un-needed version of Adobe Elements, so as it is free to me , I will give this a try first.

Adobe's Camera Raw plug-in looks to be a much better RAW converter than Canon's

Interesting. The main reason I haven't been taking anything in RAW is I have no software to handle it. I'll have to check it out. Thanks for the tip.

Thought I would update with this.....

After much effort expended installing and deinstalling numerous image browser editor packages, the realization struck me.
1. They are all slower the Win XP windows expolorer.
2. They are all crap in someway.
3. The ones that are less crap cost too much money
4. The included editors are all mostly crap as well.

So, my final solution will not be overly surprising to Tony and Matt et al.
I ended up with direct file copies from the camera, windows XP explorer for browsing and the gimp for my photo editor.
The only Canon software I used was the photostich and print program.

Oh well, sometimes you just can't be told

Interesting. I didn't think about speed. Sorry you couldn't find a package that worked out for you. I know how frustrating when you can't find a program that falls into the exact parameters that work just right for you. It's wonderful when it works, but it so rarely does.

And hey, you're one up on me. You don't have to take out your CF card and put it in a seperate reader to get your images off