It seems like the guys at 2D Boy, makers of World of Goo, have ported the game to Linux.
The interview I linked mentions a bit of the struggles involved in porting. PulseAudio was mentioned as an issue which apparently they were able to make work in the end. I wonder why OpenAL wasn’t used though. (Or if it was, why OpenAL was putting the audio through PulseAudio…). Latency isn’t really PulseAudio’s fault IMO, it’s a sound server when a game just needs access to the sound card.
As far as the game itself goes, I already own it on WiiWare so I probably won’t buy it again. But I can tell you it’s definitely worth $20. Like all puzzle games it can be a little frustrating at times. Luckily if you get fed up with a level you have a limited number of skips you can employ, and there are other features to may the game not antagonizing. So, it’s not like the bad old days where you’d work on a level for 20 minutes and then one stray click would cause you to have to start alllll over again.