Well, OK Danny.<br><br>I&#39;m typing this on a laptop running WinXP (as the previous.) <br><br>Yes, Linux FTW, blah, blah, blah.<br><br>I have written some stuff in Cache MUMPS that I haven&#39;t yet converted to GT.m.&nbsp; But then again, Cache runs on Solaris and RedHat (and Win*, and VAX/VMS) so it isn&#39;t a reason to run on a Windows platform in and of itself.<br>

<br>Anything I port from my home Linux server or from my home WinXPpro, I have to change directories, SQL connectors, ports, and the like for.&nbsp; The port from WinXP to Linux is mainly switching &quot;C:\&quot; to &quot;/home&quot;....and finding anyplace I&#39;ve hard-coded a &quot;\&quot;.<br>

<br>I am not as optimistic that River will _buy_ a cache license from <a href="http://www.intersys.com" target="_blank">www.intersys.com</a>, as I am optimistic that he&#39;ll be able to get a version (any version!) of GT.m (free beer/speech) installed for me.&nbsp; Both run approximately as well in both environments.<br>

<br>Downstairs on my Linux boxen, I have shell scripts.&nbsp; I don&#39;t have a single .BAT file on Windows that might be applicable on toolserver.&nbsp; Not one.&nbsp; (That kindof makes sense, in that you&#39;d use batch files to move files around, perhaps.&nbsp; Even if you had equivalent files, they&#39;d have to be rewritten for toolserver.)<br>

<br>Converting my stuff from Fedora to Debian is challenging enough.&nbsp; The directories, per se, are all different.&nbsp; (It&#39;s an exercise in proper discipline, to make sure configuration stuff like that is /relative/ and in a .config file.&nbsp; But a good discipline, no matter how you look at it.)<br>

<br>But converting from a&nbsp; single-user WinXP environment to a Vista Server environment?&nbsp; Doing such a thing would be much more challenging and difficult than just converting it to a Linux flavor.<br><br>(Oh, except for the fact that Cache 5 runs on WinXP, not Vista...that requires Cache.2007b, with it&#39;s per-connection licensing.&nbsp; And some amount of exhaustive testing to make sure things still work right in the version for the new platform.)<br>

<br><br>Did I say Linux FTW?&nbsp; I guess I should now.&nbsp; I very strongly feel that wherever possible, proprietary systems (anti-freedom) should be avoided.&nbsp; (Again, typing this on one-such hated Windows OS, with Cache running in the background.)<br>

<br>Windows, as a platform, has done everything it can to make command-line programming something for &quot;other&quot; OSes.&nbsp; Well, whether Windows, Linux, Solaris or something else, the toolserver shared environment is a command-line environment.&nbsp; You really can&#39;t do anything useful on a long-distance GUI.&nbsp; VNC or Remote Desktop work the same, bandwidth-wise.&nbsp; Running AWB would copy the screen image frames to you slowly over teh internets...that would be much, much slower than running AWB locally.&nbsp; (Plus: it wouldn&#39;t take many VNC/RD connections to saturate the bandwidth to toolserver.)<br>

<br>On another note, someone devoted enough could probably port the IRC linkbot code to Windows and we could exile the linkbots there.&nbsp; (That&#39;s almost certainly been done by someone, somewhere.)&nbsp; But only if it has been a naughty linkbot.<br>

<br><br>I dunno - I just don&#39;t get where this request is coming from.&nbsp; Are there disadvantaged programmers wandering around carrying signs that say &quot;WILL WORK FOR VISTA LICENSES&quot; or something?&nbsp; If you&#39;re going to port local-specific code to a command-line environment...why would you ever choose Windows?&nbsp; You&#39;d have to really like &quot;\&quot; and really haet &quot;/&quot;.<br>

<br>A &quot;Windows programmer&quot; would still have all the same barriers to entry - none of their stuff would work on a shared WinTS, and the GUI would just be slower than if they ran stuff locally.&nbsp; Much slower.<br><br>
Connel (LFTW) MacKenzie<br><br>