Not that i'm into digital photography in a big way but a number of people recommended me to try Picasa without knowing that i use Ubuntu. Looking at the google pages i discovered that they do a Linux version. I was going to try the windows version on wine before discovering that they had a linux version.
http://picasa.google.com/linux/learn_more.html http://picasa.google.com/linux/faq.html#23
Reading the two links i was interested to read the following sentence. "Wine runs on top of the X Window System and Linux or Unix. But it's not a Windows emulator; instead, it provides a Windows API middleware layer that enables Windows programs to run on Linux without the slowing effects of OS emulation or a virtual machine."
Having tried to learn about wine and virtual machines i've now found a sort of combination. One downloads version 2.7 .deb and then part of it is also running in Wine. This 'middleware layer' is perhaps something new and if anyone knows perhaps they could explain... maybe of interest to photographers amongst us!
thx james