I have been running Wine 1.8 for a couple years, with no problems, on UbuntuGnome 14.04 and more recently on UbuntuGnome 16.04.
The caveats with 14.04 is, you can't run it in windowed mode and you cannot have any other windows open when you run SC4, it simply does not play nice. Also if you have anything that pops under while playing the game, it will crash instantly, this includes the Update Notifier. So make sure to run Updates before starting the game. Also, when you launch SC4, it will start in the background so you have to wait a minute and ALT+TAB to bring to the foreground.
You can avoid these issues by installing 16.04, which will run in windowed mode and doesn't mind if other things are opened while playing. The only small issue with this setup is I can't ALT+TAB to another window, but I can use the SUPER key to raise the HUD and choose a window from there.
Also make sure you have the TELot fix, regardless of the OS version.