- Some sibling comments have noted that you can built Dexed for Linux. If you can give that a shot and get it to build and run MIDI to it, it's one of the easiest ways you can get things going.
- If you're not partial to the OS you're using (unlikely for most people, I know), give it a shot on OSX.
- Otherwise, you might want to give KXStudio [1] a shot. It's an Ubuntu distro built by Paulo Coelho (@falkTX), who did some great work building Carla [2], which I believe is an evolution of dssi-vst [3]. dssi-vst uses the VeSTige emulator (which may be Wine based) and built a VST to DSSI adapter layer over it; I believe @falkTX forked dssi-vst, improved it over time and eventually came up with Carla. You could use Carla to run an instance of windows Dexed.
- Be aware that it's tricky to get a stable driver chain working properly with Linux (and I suppose you could say the same for Windows, too). You'll want to use a community blessed audio interface and other system components in your computer if you want the highest likelihood of stability. Results aren't guaranteed.
Personally, after multiple tries over the past ten years with a variety of hardware, a combination of bad luck and lack of time led me to give up and go back to the old reliable option, which for me is OSX. There's nothing worse than being in the middle of working on a track with your inspiration going, only to have your computer freeze and reboot losing your last half an hour of work if you forgot to save. But I'd love to be able to stay use Linux for music software.
Frankly, @falkTX's work with KXStudio is impressive, and it continues to evolve. Maybe there will come a day in the future when I can finally make the leap again.