Do we need wine 50

I've just begun working with Wine myself to help adapt VB software to Linux, because I also want to leave Windows. I'm getting a big kick out of Wine. Yesterday I installed the Windows Script Host, wrote a VBScript that successfully enumerated folders, then took a screenshot of the script's message box with IrfanView!

If I had wanted to enumerate folders in a script or take a screenshot with native Linux software I'd still be at Google right now trying to figure it out.

It took me two long evenings just to figure out how to get a CPU temp. showing on my Desktop....and I didn't find out how through the docs in Linux. I had to figure it out from Googled newsgroup postings. I ended up needing to install two separate programs and adjust 3 obscure configuration files. Everything in Linux seems to be like that. Very little "just works".

So to my mind, yes, Wine is worth it, to help make the transition and also because there's so much software in Windows. But Wine also requires some fiddling around. It's only partway done and some of the most obvious needs, like being able to start a Windows program without having to resort to calling wine through command line, are still buggy. But other things work well. I installed IrfanView with no problems at all so far, other than a little bit of display irregularity. Some things might require a bit more work, like registering COM files by hand.... and some things might not work at all. It depends on the program.

For transferring files: I would make some FAT32 data parbreastions if you want to keep your NTFS. Then you can use those as a go-between for access from Linux.