Yeah, looks like Saunders went ahead and answered it for us. Considering the harassment campaign against Lorem, it likely came up in the past between them. His own words.

What a shame. If only there was a dedicated fan who has an ongoing Angels-centered project, who also started a repost account on this very site.

Lage. I am a disgrace.

People tried to port PDN over when it was still open-source, but then they locked it down. There are Linux alternatives out there. GIMP and Krita are two of them. Krita can't handle PDN files. So I'll have to convert my images to something that speaks both languages if you catch my drift.

I have tried proton, but that won't be it. I thought about a dual boot, but it'd require me to find a new Windows iso. VMs, however, are not off the table.

The reason why Paint.NET won't work on Linux is because it's built on the MS .NET framework. And that won't run on anything but Windows AFAIK.