GIMP: Replacement for Photoshop?

I was reading this article on slashdot.  The article is a review of a book on gimp which is an open source image editing package.  The quesion is how it compares with Photoshop.  Clearly, it does not compare from a price standpoint as it is opensource and thus free.  I personally have never used GIMP, but am certainly interested in the story and application.  The idea of an opensource Photoshop is hard to pass up; however, Photoshop is really the industry standard these darys.  It is easy to find plugins and tutorials on Photoshop which there seems to be very few for GIMP.  I also wonder whether GIMP supports camera RAW images.

GIMP certainly looks like it is worth a look.  If it is interesting, I may considering purchasing he book for educational purposes.  However, it will be difficult to convince me off of Photoshop given my experience with the application.