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Has anyone been able to use the Torrent-Version of Ambitions on Wine and Ubuntu?

It works fine for Windows XP, but with Ubuntu, the installation failed (I got some error about the czech help data being corrupt). So I replaced all of my Ubuntu Sims folders with their Windows version. However, when I try to launch the game, I get an error message saying "Unable to start game, Server initialization failed (0x065d274)". According to the Wine AppDB, this error occurs if the game wasn't purcheased legally and offers no further advice except for buying it.

Is there a workaround or do I really have to buy Ambitions to play the Sims 3 without rebooting?

I'm using the latest version of Wine and Ubuntu 10.04.

I only get Service Initialization Failed at boot when I've done something like pressing ALT-CRTL-DEL during the startup process, causing the Windoze Security screen to pop up and preventing DirectX from being able to load properly. Given that you're trying to do something in Wine, that could likely be the cause, a DX failure. It may also be a registry failure condition from your improper installation, and you probably have a bad ISO to boot, perhaps one truncated during some copying process for being > 4 GBs in size. You will need to make sure that nothing handling the installation and mounting was something that isn't Ginormous-File-Aware and thus misread the filesize and mangled it.

Yes, sort of, using PlayOnLinux, a happy little tree python wrapper for wine. It has scripts for installing Sims 3 from basegame to Ambitions (bring your own iso).  All in all, it's painless, except for graphical glitches here and there, which are probably card related.  (Well, a combination of bad card and poor card support.)  To mitigate them, I have everything set to low, with reflections on.  Parts of the game look like muddy shit, but hey, it runs, and I don't get a CTD.  It's my understanding that quite a few people have gotten it to work without these issues, but I haven't done enough troubleshooting/research to verify.  I've been so giddy over just getting the damn thing to work after a slew of games refused to run on Linux, that I hadn't really given it the attention it warrants.

Wine is good at a lot of things, gaming isn't one of them. Its been that way for years.