Hi Margaret,

I'm running Red Hat Linux 7.3 as a production box. I also have a desktop computer with Windox XP Pro/Red Hat Linux 8.0 dual boot that I use as my desktop computer. On the desktop computer I use windows XP Pro and Visual FoxPro 7.0 as an application development platform. Sometime I boot it into Red hat Linux 8.0 just to play and learn.

I use the computer running Red hat Linux 7.3 as a web/mail server. I did a full install of Red Hat 7.3 which gave me both MySql and Postgres as database servers. I switched about three years ago from MySQL to Postgres. I made the switch in connection with moving my web site from an ISP named Hostway out of Chicago to in-house. I use perl scripts in the cgi-bin directory to accept orders from HTML forms. Also, I use HTML to capture mail list info in a form. The customer mail list info is passed from the HTML form to a perl script that insert it into a postgres database.

I have also set up a samba share on the linux box. I use the Linux samba file system to backup accounting info and development projects located on the Window's XP Pro system. I have also move some accounting entities (e.g. Visual FoxPro Databases) from the windows OS to the samba file system. I have window clients running the VFP app which accesses the data on the Linux samba file system. It work just like it would if the VFP databases were on a windows server.

I have also written some Visual FoxPro front-end apps that I use to connect to the postgres database. This allows me to work with sales order and mailing lists info collecting from my web server, all in the confort of a Visual FoxPro front-end application. I like using a windows Visual FoxPro Client mush better that a web based HTML/perl script to interact with the postgres database. Visual FoxPro as the client is much faster and smoother that HTML/perl.

LelandJ