I first installed debian potato 20+ years ago. Had a few friends willing to play StarCraft. With a little effort, I got it working with Wine.<p>It feels like Wine was always there to save the day. What an absolute legend of a project.
While I like the <i>idea</i> of Wine, I still find that running "real" Windows as a VirtualBox guest under a Linux host is what works for me.<p>I've tried WABI, Wine and ReactOS over the years, but those never seem to 'just work'.<p>My test-bed 'de rigeur' is HP's Scanner and Printer Software. Works wonderfully in 'Windows on VirtualBox', but fails miserably with those others.
Also, with Wine you can you Windows applications on Windows. Sounds insane, but there are use cases, for old programs for which Windows itself offers no compatibility.