What I wonder is, why OS matters (other than philsophical
or religious reasons). The job gets done regardless, I
bet that CAD tools running under Windows use every
VM trick they can think of and might behave poorly if
blind-ported (or running under emulation).
On the other hand samba networking and WinSCP
have made data transport a non-problem, and you
can get decent X emulators for PCs, so why not take
advantage of PC hardware cheapness, get one of
the eBay hard drives that come with a MS-Winxx
reinstall CD and rock it?