Ubuntu Linux (I'm currently using 8.04 with a lot of updates, haven't bothered to go to 8.10 yet out of disinterest) has used both the cores of my dual-core HP Turion 64 laptop perfectly since I first nuked its "pre-installed" instance of Vi$ta and set up a real operating system on it.
One odd thing that I did notice about D2 under the WINE emulator, however; like a lot of other Windows games (Unreal Tournament and Serious Sam are good examples), these applications don't seem to be very well-written. They grab a great deal of CPU cycles (99% unless I invoke the GNOME Task Manager and force their 'nice' quota down to something a little more reasonable) and refuse to let them go until I shut down the emulator once and for all.
Not all Windows programs do this (MS Office, etc., time-slice quite well), but games for some reason are real bad citizens, they seem to want all the CPU, all the time.
Ah well, there are always tradeoffs with everything. You Window$ users are welcome to continued nonsense like "Product Activation", "Genuine Advantage" (there's an oxymoron for you eh), secret remote snooping backdoors for the CIA and NSA, and endless malware attacks; enjoy, enjoy. [Microsoft's latest idea, incidentally, which may or may not come in the Window$ 7 era, is a pay-for-play cloud computing model where if you don't pay your monthly fee to Bill and Steve, they remotely cripple various features of your local PC (say, screen resolution more than 640 x 480) until you pony up. They even got a USPTO patent for this brilliant idea of digital extortion. A wonderful idea for Microsoft stockholders, insanely bad idea for computer users, for whom there are few obvious advantages but huge drawbacks.]
Good luck you all... you'll need it.
Cheers
Mr. Bill
