Sorry for the long story. I hope my plight is at least somewhat entertaining to you.
Okay, so I know I will get a lot of opinions, but really, I think I am interested in those opinions, along with the supporting reasons.
I've been programing forever (since I taught myself to program BASIC in high school on my TI-58, in the late 70's). I learned somewhere between 5 and 10 other languages along the way.
I currently use VFP 9 exclusively along with some very helpful tools (xCase, VFE, and SDT). This makes my daily life very easy. Clearly I am entrenched in MSware.
I have 5 computers at home, about 20 clients at work (some of which I built), and 5 servers (um, I also do all the networking stuff at work, as well as all the program design, implementation, training, etc.) All clients are currently WinXP and servers are a mix of 2003 and W2K Advanced Servers, running in Terminal Server mode (hence the XP clients. No additional licensing fees).
I use FireFox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice, so those are no problem, but I would like to be able to continue to run my current VFP apps on UNIX if possible. I know that this was possible at one point with WINE, but I understand that this violates the VFP EULA according to MS.
My long term goal is to develop in Python or Java, however, nothing seems to be as sweet as VFP at this point. I will need tools for those as well.
The fact that MS has decided to kill VFP is my major reason for leaving MS. Clearly they are not interested in me as a customer, only in creating customers who will pay them on a regular basis. Since I have no interest in handing over cash to them on a regular basis, they have no interest in me. Perhaps if they provided something of use for that cash I wouldn't be so pissed.
I've been thinking about looking an UNIX for a long time now, but it doesn't really have a unified interface to look at, so it's somewhat confusing for someone who doesn't have any exposure to it. I really need a starting point.
1) I would like a flavor, if possible, that I could use at work and at home.
a) If not just one, two that are close, if possible, would be nice.
2) At home I mostly do Adobe Photoshop, and some Video editing programs.
3) I VPN into work from Home. VPN is handled by the office VPN/Firewall/router.
4) One of the servers at work runs W2k Advanced server, in Terminal Server mode. What UNIX would be best for that?
5) VMware looks cool and all, however, my hardware has been around since before VMware, so it doesn't have the right memory structure for virtualization. If there is some virtualization software that doesn't require new hardware that would be cool.
6) My goal here is to move to a platform that works (is solid), is supported, does not have a million security issues, and is well thought out in it's interface, so I don't have to keep thinking "man that's dumb. why didn't they do it this way instead." or, at least, that is easily enough modifiable, so that I can fix those (hopefully minor) problems.
7) Clearly cost is an issue these days. That is the whole reason for leaving MS.
So, if you are still with me, thanks very much for your time. What do you think? Any ideas? Where should I start? I haven't a clue even as to how the different versions are different from each other. Worse, how those differences, subtle or otherwise, will effect my and my users day to day usage.
Your comments are greatly appreciated.
Okay, so I know I will get a lot of opinions, but really, I think I am interested in those opinions, along with the supporting reasons.
I've been programing forever (since I taught myself to program BASIC in high school on my TI-58, in the late 70's). I learned somewhere between 5 and 10 other languages along the way.
I currently use VFP 9 exclusively along with some very helpful tools (xCase, VFE, and SDT). This makes my daily life very easy. Clearly I am entrenched in MSware.
I have 5 computers at home, about 20 clients at work (some of which I built), and 5 servers (um, I also do all the networking stuff at work, as well as all the program design, implementation, training, etc.) All clients are currently WinXP and servers are a mix of 2003 and W2K Advanced Servers, running in Terminal Server mode (hence the XP clients. No additional licensing fees).
I use FireFox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice, so those are no problem, but I would like to be able to continue to run my current VFP apps on UNIX if possible. I know that this was possible at one point with WINE, but I understand that this violates the VFP EULA according to MS.
My long term goal is to develop in Python or Java, however, nothing seems to be as sweet as VFP at this point. I will need tools for those as well.
The fact that MS has decided to kill VFP is my major reason for leaving MS. Clearly they are not interested in me as a customer, only in creating customers who will pay them on a regular basis. Since I have no interest in handing over cash to them on a regular basis, they have no interest in me. Perhaps if they provided something of use for that cash I wouldn't be so pissed.
I've been thinking about looking an UNIX for a long time now, but it doesn't really have a unified interface to look at, so it's somewhat confusing for someone who doesn't have any exposure to it. I really need a starting point.
1) I would like a flavor, if possible, that I could use at work and at home.
a) If not just one, two that are close, if possible, would be nice.
2) At home I mostly do Adobe Photoshop, and some Video editing programs.
3) I VPN into work from Home. VPN is handled by the office VPN/Firewall/router.
4) One of the servers at work runs W2k Advanced server, in Terminal Server mode. What UNIX would be best for that?
5) VMware looks cool and all, however, my hardware has been around since before VMware, so it doesn't have the right memory structure for virtualization. If there is some virtualization software that doesn't require new hardware that would be cool.
6) My goal here is to move to a platform that works (is solid), is supported, does not have a million security issues, and is well thought out in it's interface, so I don't have to keep thinking "man that's dumb. why didn't they do it this way instead." or, at least, that is easily enough modifiable, so that I can fix those (hopefully minor) problems.
7) Clearly cost is an issue these days. That is the whole reason for leaving MS.
So, if you are still with me, thanks very much for your time. What do you think? Any ideas? Where should I start? I haven't a clue even as to how the different versions are different from each other. Worse, how those differences, subtle or otherwise, will effect my and my users day to day usage.
Your comments are greatly appreciated.
