If you are an electrical engineer or electronics hobbyist interested in programming PIC microcontrollers with C source code in Linux instead of Windows, I have been able to get things working in antiX Linux M8.2 with MPLAB version 8.43 (with  HI-TECH PICC 9.70) in WINE 1.0.1-1.  This combination gives me all of the functionality I had in Windows without requiring the use of Windows.

I tried using open source software in Linux (SDCC, GPSIM, PikLab/KTechLab) but kept running into problems.  The arrow pointing to the line of code never showed up when using GPSIM to simulate C code.  I also ran into issues like limitations in the selection of microcontrollers supported.  I admire what the open source developers are doing, but their work is not yet ready for prime time.

I had difficulty in the past trying to program microcontrollers with C source code in Puppy Linux.  I'm not sure if the issue was the older version of WINE, the older version of MPLAB (before HI-TECH PICC was integrated into MPLAB), or Puppy Linux itself.

-- 
Jason Hsu, Linux user <jhsu802701 at jasonhsu.com>