>Mark,
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>My RedHat certified husband says this (Linux server) should be a piece of cake. However, I have not actually tried it.
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>He says that Linux is most definitely reliable, fast, and the price is right.
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>There are some developments which may make it possible to run VFP applications (client) under Linux in the near future. (Wine and VMWare)

I'm familiar with the details of WINE - not even close to a full-blown Win32 interface. There are better chances to run a VFP app under OS/2 Warp 4.0, although Win32 emulation has been promised from WINE for over 4 years RSN. I've no first-hand experience with the VMWare product, but there are enough internal differences to make me believe that we'll see VFP 7 well in advance of a working emulator to support a full-fledged Win32 environment under Linux.

A simple case from MS product history - OS/2 Warp and Win3.x with the flawed Win32s environment could and did successfully host VFP 3.0 applications ever since the release of VFP 3.0, which from my last encounter with WINE, is something that WINE hasn't been able to do AFAIK to date. The required Win32s environment is a great deal less complex than the current base Win32 environment, and add to that things beyond the base platform used by VFP, such as COM support, and it's a battle that I don't think the Linux troops are likely to win in a timely fashion as long as the target keeps shifting on them, and February 17th is now the target date for the next big shift in the Win32 platform.

We have enough trouble getting VFP apps to work under Win9x and WinNT environments to make it a daunting task. The inability of WinNT 3.51 to fully host VFP6 applications, and the various installation problems for VFP6 sapplications on the original retail Win95 operating system reveal the degree of reliance on WOSA internals that none of the Unix-derived products have been able to achieve, inclusing Linux.

Again, it's an up-hill battle that doesn't look to be easily accomplished in a timely fashion by Linux. It'd be nice to have real competition to the Wintel environment for the desktop, but Linux has a number of obstacles that make it unlikely to comete for the desktop; in adddition to the requirements for supporting Win32, installation is nowhere near as easy as Win98, and it requires a good deal more expertise to get it working adequately for the average end-user, or even the average small company PC support group, to make it an attractive alternative at least at this time. The cost of Win98, WinNT and Win2K, especially at the corporate volume pricing, make the difference in cost untenable - even if it were entirely free, the cost of configuration and management, and the restrictions on what tools will and won't work, make Linux unattractive where the basic application mix is coming from the Windows world.

The best chance for Linux to deploy is in companies which transition from traditional Win32 clients to a thin-client or Web-based applications, where the Win32 internals don't have to run on the client system directly. VFP is not positioned well in this marketplace; the built-in support for Web deployment using a monolithic VFP appliction isn't there without things like Rick Strahl's West Wind products. VFP positioned at mid-tier, with the UI handled in a browser would be one tactic that could work, although the server now has to be able to run the VFP application, and use a different platform for producing the application front end. This is doable, but again, the server has to be able to run the VFP application at mid-tier at a minimum.

I'd like to be wrong on this, but the odds of Linux fully supporting VFP apps before VFP changes again are slim from my POV.

Even the non-Intel Windows NT environments such as the Alpha don't run native VFP apps at this point, even with processor emulation modes. At least the underlying operating system calls are there.
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>>>You can host the data files on a Linux box, but not run the application on the Linux station.
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>>Ed, how well does Linux work as a replacement for Netware and NT Server if you want a reliable, fast LAN server for VFP data files? I've been curious about this possibility for some time.