Gtkam is a front end for retrieving photos from a digital camera. It's simple, easy to use, and automatically detects cameras (well mine at least :). The main window shows all the pictures within the selected folder. Right clicking on a picture allows the user to view the file or save it to a location. If you're fussy you can also select the photos you want and save, I just tend to grab the whole lot and dump them on the web. That is until someone complains about compromising positions (link removed to protect the innocent).
If you're using Gnome take a look at GThumb It now downloads photos as soon as the camera is connected, you can't get much easier than that!I still tend to use
gPhoto -Psimply because it's a heaps faster but this works well for people who want a graphical front end.