So good news, more good news and some bad news:
The latest Ubuntu not only works great on my ASUS PC, it works better than any Ubuntu ever did! All devices were recognized and the Mac partition was visible. I was able to see all the data. Now, I could just copy the data to one of the local NTFS volumes but I suspect something might get lost in translation with exception of simple .txt files. So I saw that I could connect to a server. My main Mac computer already had SMB file sharing enabled, but Ubuntu would not accept my credentials as either a registered user or guest! Oh well. The Mac is running El Capitan. The default "WORKGROUP" domain was recognized by Ubuntu also. Not sure what is wrong here but I have often experienced file sharing trouble between my Macs and Windows systems anyway. Not surprised.
Without verifiying if I have any Boing Bags installed at all, I installed Fusion 3.2 on my OS 3.9 WinUAE system. It did put the RsrvWarm in the startup-sequence and the system still worked after a reboot. I launched Fusion and stepped through the configuration. Was not sure what Mac System version is on the partition so I chose my 512k ROM vs the 1MB ROM. The system booted and then halted right away saying there was a mismatch of some kind...probably due to the incorrect ROM. No worries, I will just reboot (since I do not know how to properly quit Fusion with the Mac side running) and reconfigure. Well, guess what? The moment I started up Fusion again and agreed to the terms, it guru'd on me just like the other OS I tested first! Funny thing is, there were no new files written in the Fusion folder that I can tell. I didn't save a configuration file either.
I'm sure someone more experienced with Fusion can solve this one easy...assuming that Fusion was even stable at version 3.2. I know development stopped a long time ago.
With the latest WinUAE, I can also experiment with using an actual Picasso IV ROM file instead of the UAE Picasso emulation. That might be better suited to Mac emulation software.