Just popping in to say i'm like-minded.
I quite (massively) prefer using Linux over Windows as a workstation, since it gives me absolute control over the layout of my desktop (Desktop Environments/Window Managers/Workspaces, etc) meaning i can adjust my linux system to function in whichever way is most convenient for exactly the work i'm doing (coding for example)
And i know a lot of people also prefer Mac/OSX as workstations even if i personally h.a.t.e. these. But porting to linux means porting from linux to mac would be a breeze since most of the things that work on linux will easily work on mac too.
I am going to jump in and assume that the code is mostly written in C# since it requires net framework. In my experiences porting C# code over to Python shouldn't be that hard, although possibly time consuming although if i were to vote i'd say go for rewriting the code in C++ instead (for performance's sake, and even better cross platform capabilities).
But yes if it were C# to Python, i learned python by porting C# code over to it (it's just that simple...)
The issue is the GUI code, i don't know any GUI code that WPF can easily be ported to, and i'm not going to recommend GTK since it's becoming more and more obsolete with time. Right now in context with linux, QT4 seems to be the GUI language to go with but this isn't an area i'm very familiar with to begin with.
Running it under a virtual machine is an option, but it's an option i am not fond of. (Virtual Machines are always a "last resort" kind of thing to me)
If i knew anything about writing graphics code i would (without much hesitation) write my own program with similar functionality as articy: draft to run under linux. It'd be development time well spent. Actually maybe i should just look into that