I've got it running in VirtualBox - the disk is huge though. I'll be removing as much software as possible to try to get it smaller. I do have a question - do the ones having trouble have up-to-date computers or should I try to set this up for older systems? Ubuntu 22.04 is quite a resource hog.

The program is enormous - it doesn't fit on one DVD even, they distribute it on flash drive, SD card, or by download. That's because of the well-over 200,000 photos... lores, but they add up. I have never had trouble with it, but I run it on Windows. I have been running it since v.2 like in 2005 or 2006, now it's up to x8 and soon to be x9. My machine is 6 or 7 years old and it works fine.

Can't answer most of that but Mint 19 is very small and woks very well.

The virtual machine could be small but the program itself has a lot of data, as Roberta mentioned.

I found that out when I had 10 gig free in my VM and couldn't unzip it, then 20 gig free and unzipped but couldn't install even though I deleted the zip file, then 30 gig free, delete the zip, then install. I'll put it together unzipped but before installation so the user will have to look at the intro dialog and accept the OrchidWiz EULA with the chance to put in the key. Having space to unzip it adds 10 gig which would compress easily (blank space) but you can always increase the size of the virtual HD as needed so why add any extra. I'll try Mint and see how that goes, besides possibly saving tens of gigs of download size it could expand the range of computers that can run this. My image is running a screen server called Wayland that I don't think is really ready for prime time honestly, especially if you don't have the exact hardware the developers had. I think going back to Xorg would be better for this.

Unfortunately the user interfaces for Linux are not consistent and mostly amateurish. A few years back I thought Windows took the cake for a horrible desktop but Cinnamon is worse.

Hmmm. Well I have two images which will run x8.0, one Ubuntu, one Mint, both 40 gig. Anyone want to test them once I polish them up a bit? (Assuming I can find a host that accepts such large files - I'm on Google Drive but I don't know their limits.)

I use Debian.

Then if you have the latest winehq version (I've been using staging for all my windows software, it's 7.xx but I don't use much windows stuff) you need to set up a 32-bit wineprefix. If you're already using wine on a 64-bit distro you'll need to set a new wineprefix so in a terminal run

WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/.wine32 wineboot

to set up the wineprefix, then

WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/.wine32 winetricks dotnet40

go through the prompts

WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/.wine32 winetricks jet40

go through those prompts, then cd to where the X8.0 installer is unzipped and run

WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/.wine32 wine setup.exe

go through the OrchidWiz installer, and it should even put a handy icon on your desktop. If you don't have winetricks do

sudo apt install winetricks

before trying the winetricks dotnet40 and winetricks jet40 commands above. If you're not on the latest winehq wine, I think WineHQ - Run Windows applications on Linux, BSD, Solaris and macOS has instructions on how to access their repos. Once you have the desktop icon you'll need to right-click it and allow launching as a program, at least on ubuntu but it seemed mint didn't need me to do that, but it didn't show the OrchidWiz icon, it used a generic icon on the launcher instead. I can probably fix that in the image when I trim it up and polish it but before I even start on that I'm going to fine-tooth the license to see if I can distribute their unzipped installer like that. I would think that would be a good thing, the more people who can use it doesn't mean less paying customers, so if I can't do it they must hate money I guess hehe but anyway if anyone wants to try one I'll check the details on that and get started if it's ok license-wise.

Not OK license-wise. Each person who purchases the product is licensed to run it on 2 machines. If a person who purchases it wants to run it under Linux, your instructions will be handy. But they have to own Orchidwiz first. You can't legally distribute the Orchidwiz, at least not while they are still in business and very likely after. If they change the licensing terms later then you could revisit. But it is very possible that it will be taken over by someone else - I am sure that the Orchidwiz owners are in negotiations to make that happen. If so, it still is not going to become a freebie.