[qquark]

... Which, despite what I imagine is an incredible amount of effort on their part, struggles to run acceptably not even half the software you throw at it ...

Wine is unfortunately not a reliable solution for a huge number of tasks mostly populated by windows-only software (e.g. professional CAD & PCB software - and no, open source "alternatives" in those domains are NOT able to compete, which is perfectly understandable IMO). Even when you get something running, you get locked out of updates because the next version of your software might not work anymore.

When you insist on running those on a Linux system, it becomes better just running a dedicated VM, but you can then kiss goodbye to performance on 3D rendering for example...

It seems obvious to me that running windows apps flawlessly on linux is something Microsoft absolutely does not want: The migration path to a Linux-only environment and native apps would become incredibly more simple, and they would probably lose market share overall... I definitely know I would eliminate it in a heartbeat if I could.

[hnlmorg]

Personally I've found my success rate with WINE to be more around 80 to 90%. In fact in the last year I've only needed to use it for for 3 different tools, all of which worked flawlessly (in fact it later turned out that one of those tools officially supports WINE for their Linux support).

My convoluted point is that it really depends on what you throw at it. Anecdotally I've found stuff that ties into DirectX to be the most awkward and since you've mentioned 3D packages I'm not at all surprised you have had less success with WINE than I.

[jamespo]

But if you are happy with that presumably expensive proprietary software, why not run windows?