[linux-audio-user] Linux Soft Sampler...

I am anxiously anticipating the day I can throw out my WinXP box and trade it in for a fresh install of Linux to do my audio work. I have been looking around on the web for a soft sampler for Linux, but haven't come up with anything. There are virtual synths galore, but no full featured soft samplers, ala Gigastudio, Kontakt, Halion, etc. Am I missing anything? I don't know much about csound, but am intrigued by it. Would there possibly be a way to write the equivalent of a soft sampler using csound? I suppose that would require a realtime version of csound like DirectCSound for Win32. Can csound for Linux work in realtime? Has anyone tried getting Native Instruments Kontakt (or any other Windows soft sampler) to run in Wine? I'm curious how/if this would work. I run a console-only install of Mandrake on a 233Mhz as my webserver off of my cable modem connection, so I don't have X where I can test any of this. Thanks in advance for your help. -Jesse