>>Having actually written database programs for Linux and having used Linux on a regular basis I can say firmly that Linux is VERY stable, more so then any versin of windows I have ever run.

My Linux boxes here rarely, if ever, crash. I can't say the same about the Windows machines...

>>A prime example would be Red Hat v6.2 which even comes with quite a nice installr. Either way Linux is very stable, if anything it suffers from a lack of program content.

The content is coming. There are more and more desktop apps (particularly in GNOME) being produced, and the server-side apps are available and solid.

>>Now as for programming on Linux there are many solutions. My current favorite being Perl with a mySQL backend for data. You can use perlTK to get a pretty descent interface too.

My personal favorite is Python, using the GNOME bindings for the user interface. There are a number of database backends available, including one written in 100% Python.

>>But in the end I'd rather have VFP on linux. *G*

That would be a tough call for me - Python's actually more object-oriented than VFP. I just wish that there was a way to do true native code compilations. As it is, there's just the freeze method.