Just another thankyou to microchip and ken_yap for your hints in this thread.
I was able to use that technique to launch a neat one line job to stabilize many dozens of my home video clips using VirtualDub under wine, with the deshaker plugin. The command line I used is in this thead:
openSUSE Forums - View Single Post - KDENlive from Packman?
I would have posted it here, but did not want to be accused of "double posting".
... Now a weakness of all Linux NLE is they do not have stabilization software. Hence being able to stabilize one's home videos with a legally free windoze app running under wine is the next best thing. And indeed VirtualDub with deshaker plugin, after some tuning/head-scratching, now works well for the limited set of codecs I have set it up for.
My Intel Core i7 920 has never worked so hard, as my % CPU is running around 300% as it is very busy stabilizing many video clips.