I use NUS downloader using wine had to use winetricks to get it to work properly, needs that shitty dotnet crap
For things that don't require speed or 3d-accel I prefer running XP in virtualbox.
MUCH easier to set up inho.
Even installed some sshd in it to make automated builds for wbfs2fat.
(Since I was unable to find a crosscompiler for python)