I've been looking deeper into this, the laptop we're using is a Lenovo G555 running PM7, So to get this Cricut running I installed Win7 in a VM and spent the past 2 days downloading, installing & configuring Windows updates, but the bottom line is it's not gonna work it's just gonna be too slow, firstly the laptop only has 3 gb of RAM and is only capable of a mximum of 4gb, the minimun requirements for the Design Space software for this machine is 4gb, so I have to face facts it's not gonna work in a VM I just don't have the resources.
So I have 3 options
Option (1)
if libcutter get's it working in Linux via Inkscape/Inkcut then that would probably be the easiest solution
Option (2)
Give in to ProvoCraft and wipe the laptop completely and install Windows 7 bare metal
Option (3) (my preferred option)
Try again to talk her into flogging the lot on ebay and getting one of ones supported from here
http://robocut.org or
http://inkcut.sourceforge.net/ and running it natively in Linux, as far as design software is concerned if she can't get her head around Inkscape it's quite possible applications like Make The Cut, Sure Cuts A Lot or Easy Design Studio would run in Wine.
Graeme
Sadly the Cricut Explorer isn't one of them, it's listed (though misspelled) on page 8 of the cutters list as unsupported.