Okay, time to change this up. Previously this page detailed my initial attempts at getting a usable Linux desktop installed, along with WINE for some of my Windows only appz all within the safe test environment of Virtual PC.

Well, I gave up on that. It's not for the faint of heart, or a Linux newbie like myself. I don't recommend anyone try it (think of a installing an OS twice to get it right, which is a mouseless GUI, painful...)

So, finally, I sucked up the courage (and made some space on my hard drive) and installed Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty from the live cd (not server edition) on my PC!
I've even got Dreamweaver working as well!!!
Before I go into great detail about how I managed this and whats next, let me state the following:

A) Getting dual monitors working in Linux is way tricky, I'm not there yet...
B) Getting WINE working properly is a little tricky as well, hopefully I'll be able to shed some helpful light on that topic
C) Don't be afraid of Linux, just do your homework first!!
D) You can look at it two ways, either Linux isn't quite ready for the masses, or we're(I'm) just plain spoiled by the double-click-and-it-works-PnP Windows...

I started off with this tutorial as my guide to follow http://luiscosio.com/how-to-dreamweaver-and-flash-8-running-on-ubuntu-da...
even thought I'll be using Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty instead.

After following all the instruction as best I could, still no dreamweaver. I knew something was probably wrong when I had to manually create the folders to which I was supposed to copy files to in cluding the .wine directory. Also, there was a point that I was to be type in "yes" when asked, which I wasn't...
So I headed off to the net to find answers, this time at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wine

Following the steps there, open a terminal and add the following line to the sources file "deb http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt feisty main"

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
wget -q http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/387EE263.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -
thats a capital letter o, not a zero, btw,


sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wine
winecfg

Now we're getting somewhere. That last line in terminal creates the .wine folder and all the sub folders I need to copy those files to, so, I back track and do that now.
Also, the tutorial is not clear where to copy the .reg file to, I threw it in the .wine directory and hoped for the best.

still, typing wine dreamweaver.exe in the terminal does nothing but give me errors. Seems you have to change the directory to that in which you .exe file is in, then use that command
cd /home/myusername/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Macromedia/Dreamweaver 8/

well, the terminal does not seem to like file paths with spaces, so back to the Ubuntu page;

" 1. Download the Windows application from any source (e.g. download.com). Download the .EXE (executable).
2. Place it in a convenient directory (e.g. the desktop, or home folder).
3. Open the terminal, and cd into the directory where the .EXE is located.
4. Type wine the-name-of-the-application.extension (e.g. wine realplayer.exe). "

So I copy the Dreamweaver directory from the "Program Files" folder to a folder on the desktop named "Dreamweaver8", no spaces. And in the terminal
cd /home/myusername/Desktop/Dreamweaver8

seems okay,
wine dreamweaver.exe

Success!!! Now, just don't close the terminal while your app, in this case Dreamweaver, is running ;)

I'll be going over these steps shortly to weed out any mistakes, good luck!!

More to follow...