If you are interested in using the Area Editor under Linux, it works under Wine - see http://www.winehq.org/.
Here is an example screenshot:
Note - the use under Wine is NOT DIRECTLY SUPPORTED. Wine is an 'alpha' release product (at present). It may crash or not work correctly. This is very likely a Wine problem and not an Area Editor one. If you register Area Editor for use under Wine make sure you register *after* you are sure it works well enough for you.
If there is a bug when running under Wine that cannot be reproduced under Windows I cannot guarantee to fix it, as I don't have any control over the Wine development.
Currently tested under codeweavers-wine-20020904-7.i386.rpm running under Debian 3.0 'Woody' release, using 4.2.1 of the XFree86 XWindows release.