Again, don't mean to hijack this thread, but I need to make a correction here. Debian can be just as light weight if you (re)install with just the "standard system utilities". Simply uninstalling your desktop environments, e.g. Gnome, KDE, is not enough, as it'll leave programs installed under your the "Debian desktop environment", e.g. LibreOffice, GIMP, gedit etc.

Also, Debian is obviously much easier to install than Arch!

OP, if you are still around and interested, I can walk you through the process of installing the poker clients (and using wine) in this thread. It is a method that is pretty universally translatable across debian-based systems like ubuntu, mint, etc (I am on mint KDE for what it is worth). It is pretty easy to follow honestly.

Would it be possible to run the Mac installation?

Not sure why people think a VM isn't viable. I run OSX for my main OS and win8 in a VM.

I can play 10 tables on Stars with HEM2 running. My computer is 4yrs old. 16gb and SSD

You may or may not be aware of the fact that Pokerstars has stopped working for Linux for about two months now.

There is a workaround.
Download and install the latest client to a Windows machine. Log in and accept all the terms.
Transfer the whole Pokerstars directory from the Win machine to your Linux.

Worked for me on Kubuntu 18.x and Mint 18.x. (Wine 3.0.4)
Doesn't work on Kubuntu 14.04.

I did it by setting up a VM with Win7 in it (you can get free legal trial copies) because I don't have Windows anywhere, but it can be done in other ways.

Actually, playing it in the VM is better, and you still don't really use Windows to connect to anything - except in a VM - which no sane person would do, right? :·)

Just to clarify; you do need a license for the OS you run on a VM. Whether anyone cares if you don't is another story.

Well, you can get free legal trial copies from Microsoft themselves.

They run for 90 days. After that, you can extend the activation five times - for W7 - (so you can use the Windows 7 VM legally for 6 x 90 = 540 days in total).

That should give you time to play a few tournaments ;·)

Thought I'd post an update to this, as it's something I've been trying to get working myself recently and this was one of the threads that I stumbled upon.

I've managed to get Pokerstars, PT4, Flopzilla and Equilab all running perfectly on Ubuntu 18.04. Even the PT4 hud is pretty flawless. Having the apps run natively on Linux is a massive improvement over having to run a virtual machine or dual boot.

I used Crossover Office to get the job done. It's a version of wine which makes installing Windows software on Linux fairly painless. There's really not much else to it. Just install the apps as you would on Windows.

Happy to answer any questions.

They are requesting input for the new version of Twoplustwo on the Vanilla software again, if you want to give your input the thread is here:
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/5...forum-1766061/