Well, this is just a quick post to say that I've gotten OOTP9 installed on Ubuntu Linux (8.04 "Hardy Heron", to be precise), using WINE 1.0, and it works a treat!
So far, everything seems to run just fine. FaceGen (I set it to "troubleshooting mode 1", the same as I did for OOTP8), and in-game sound are fine. I get errors from Wine if I have music playing when I launch the game, but that's Wine's problem, not OOTP's.
It's definitely much snappier than OOTP8, even the interface seems more responsive. The only thing I'm curious about is if FTP exports still get mangled, but I'm not in an OOTP9 online league, so I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
Just wanted to let any other Linux users out there (all 3 or 4 of you) that OOTP9 works great. Nothing like paying more for a game than for the OS that I play it in, huh?
Here's a quick screenshot, just to show you all how it looks:
Thanks, Markus! It's good to know that both of my nerdy hobbies can coexist happily.