After playing around for a few weeks with my box (i.e. fixing stuff) I've got everything back working the way I like.
Actually, it's been a real test of my patience getting all the weird hardware I like to use to work. Thankfully, the only thing I have that doesn't work well with Linux is my WinTV USB card (which requires a kernel recompile, don't ask
).
I very much prefer the way this system works to Wind'ohs! but sadly Sims 2 will not yet function (they don't even have an entry in the Wine App DB yet). Given the way EA operates, it seems highly unlikely they will do an official Linux version, so I'll just have to wait for support in Wine.