I've never tried Mint, I'll take a look in a VM if I get a chance. I've not had troubles with any recent distros I've tried, that's a little surprising. SUSE will definitely work.
DT
[EDIT] Quite correct, it appears to be installing the 32 bit wine, doesn't appear to give you an option, either. Newsbin does seem to work fine, though, not having any crashing issues. When you say crashing the machine, you mean literally the whole OS crashes? That indicates more serious problems. wine might just be triggering it.
Interesting distro, seemed like a no-brainer, but I still prefer me SUSE.