How do I run the Gene Construction Kit under Linux?

There are only a few Mac or Windows programs that don't have a good equivalent on Linux. One of these few is the Gene Construction Kit (GCK) from Textco. GCK is available for both Windows and Mac. So it should be possible to run it on an i86-Linux machine using wine (a sort of emulator). I tried that and failed (I didn't try really hard). However, probably any Windows program can be run under Linux using VMware. Unfortunately VMware is commerical and expensive (but there is a fully functional time-limited demo). GCK does run under VMware 4.0/W2K/RedHat9 without problems. The only disappointment in VMware is the "Shared Folders" option. It is much better to share your Linux home directory via Samba and then have it automounted when you log into your emulated Windows OS. I even managed to hide Linux-specific files in my home directory that start with a dot (like .mozilla) by inserting "hide dot files = yes" into the samba configuration file /etc/samba/smb.conf. Although I am using VMware at the moment, I plan to switch to Wine in order to avoid any Microsoft code.