OK I'll experiment with the HT.
Wine is acceptable for full UI TG2. In fact I prefer it to the Mac version but a render client would be ideal.
ZBrush is actually quite easy to learn in my opinion. I don't get why people criticize the UI. I think it's brilliant. I love the ZSpheres. There is no other way to model organic forms so quick.
One thing I find is that to do good stuff in ZBrush i.e. characters you need to know anatomy even if the stuff you are doing is not life like. I can draw but I'm used to drawing from life. I'll be doing some work learning anatomy.
This looks really good:
http://the-structure-of-man.blogspot.com/People criticize it but what they don't get is that this guy is not teaching you how to draw he is teaching you how to invent a human form from your mind. If you can't do this you get stuck for ideas in ZBrush.
I've got Wings 3D working now. The version in the Ubuntu repository is compiled with the wrong version of Erlang and has been for ages. Plus, my old graphics card had problems with it. The version from the Wings site works but the stable version is better. It has the new Open GL shaders whereas the unstable version hasn't for some reason.
I'm experimenting with taking full mesh terrains into Blender from TG2. The difference now is that I can do it without the Open GL collapsing. The trouble is this divided terrain output. I'm not sure how to join it again in Blender or any app for that matter. It might seem like a simple task but I haven't actually found a way of doing it. For certain reasons, I need to be able to treat the whole mesh as one. It's very annoying because this terrain would have benefitted from smoothing but if it is separated I can't do this. All done on Linux including the TG2 part. Blender is fast for rendering but if you want global illumination you have to use Yafray then render times go into nightmares. That's why Modo is so good. Very fast global illumination.
I'll have to eventually try going the other way - bringing models into TG2.
http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/677/tg2blenderld6.jpg