I've been using PokerStars under Linux with wine for quite a while now, and generally it runs really nicely. The only problem I have is multitabling related, and possibly has to do with my window manager(s).

- When I set wine to not let my window manager manage the Stars windows, then Stars works fine - all tables needing action pop up, etc. The only problem is that because my WM isn't managing the windows, they're not included in my window list, and they are not in my Alt+Tab cycle, which is highly annoying. They also just stay on top of other windows I might have open. Another side effect is, that my HUD doesn't find the windows, and thus is not displaying anything.

- Now when I set wine to let my WM manage the Stars windows, tables won't pop up correctly. I hear the attention sound, but the window won't come to the front.

So both of these options have rather serious side effects when playing more than a few tables. When I play 4-6 tables, I'll let my WM control the Stars tables, and arrange them manually with little to no overlap. But when I want to play more tables, then I am ****ed. I can chose between using a HUD and having proper focus.

I have tried these in (standalone) OpenBox and then in Xfce4, as I had heard that it would work better there, which it doesn't - at least not for me.

I would be really interested to hear from someone that uses PokerStars in wine with a HUD and with overlap, on how they do it, so maybe I can find a solution that really works with more than 4 tables.

Which HUD runs under Wine?
I'm using XP in a VM on Ubuntu 10.10 to play Merge/Minted here.......

Oh, the HUD doesn't run under wine, I use fpdb and its HUD, which is written in Python, and doesn't need wine. It does recognize PokerStars windows if PokerStars runs under wine, though (if I set wine so that the windows are controlled by the WM). I used to use a WinXP VM with HEM, too, but I really hate booting up a VM for playing, and using the Windows task bar, etc. - plus I can't find my WinXP key atm.

I was on Ubuntu, too, until 11.04, at which point I switched to Arch ().

Oh, ok. FPDB HUD doesn't work on Merge and the Carbon client doesn't work with wine for me so i've no choice but using a VM. You using Gnome or KDE with Arch?
Maybe LXDE for a WM?

I was using OpenBox at first, and have now switched to XFCE4, since I read that that would work better (but it essentially works the same in that regard). I really do not want to use KDE or GNOME (especially since Gnome 3 and KDE 4), and LXDE uses OpenBox as a WM, so that won't be any help most likely

used to work fine with xfce (wine under debian with fpdb) until a few month ago,but it no longer does (maybe after an update). Never worked fine under gnome or lxde for me.