I've been using MS os's since 1991, and around 1998 I decided to go ahead and try FreeBSD. I had it on my hd for a while but it was really not adequate for a desktop use, so I went back to windows. Then later on, I needed a firewall/router for a small lan I had set up for the house, so I used linux. It wasn't too bad since I pretty much knew the basics from BSD. Then I got irritated at Windows constantly having problems with viruses and crashing, and my firewall computer never needing maintenance, so I put Debian on a partition on my desktop. I dual booted for a couple years, until KDE and whatnot started to really improve in regards to appearance, sound support, video support, useful apps. I found myself booting windows less and less. I still have the Windows partition because of the work I have to do in Cubase, but as soon as LMMS or one of the other Cubase-like apps mature into something I can use (working VST support!), I will have to get rid of Windows altogether.

You can run a lot of Windows apps and games in wine. I use it to play World of Warcraft. Check out www.winehq.org , they've got a database with the results of their experiments with different applications. I did a quick search for it and found a program called Cubase SX, and I'm not sure if that's what you need but here's the app db page for version 3.