Long winded so be prepared.

I have been an opensource advocate for some time now. I met slackware and finally felt comfortable letting go of windows. Recently I have reverted back to a dual boot system with Debian and XP, reason being that I have a new found interest in creating web sites.
Through windows I have been using Adobe Photoshop and Dreamweaver MX with the help of a fellow web dev who doesnt mind an i.o.u. for licensing his copies of said software to my system. A lot has been done on my end in educating myself on how assembly or basic HTML and CSS sites. Within this time (the last 3 weeks) I have picked up a few clients that are quite well known locally, and hold a mutual interest of what I am capable of. They dont expect any kind of smoke and lights show and are happy to work with what I know as of this point, but still I feel a bit of panic.
I know that Linuxquestions.org have a new site in the beta stage of programming and this could not come at a better time, but I am curious of a few things...
Since I have been wanting to move my system over to the open-soure world but am temporarily handicapped by my limited understanding of web-dev, what do you all recommend? java? perl? LAMP? i dont know where to start. Since I have found people who are interested in what I think is what I want to do as a career I need guidance. I visit sites like devshed and things like that, but I dont really know what I am reading about sometimes. Money is kind of tight, but I accept any book recommendations and I am on the way to set up a separate system to play around with LAMP-type software and others. Sort of what people call a sandbox system? Any advice is helpful.

Hi there,

I wish you all the best in this new direction. I'm a long shot from a professional, and haven't used much java, and no Perl (except in the form of Template Toolkit) or LAMP. I've tinkered with web design and done some graphics manipulation along those lines though, so since noone else has responded I'll put in my humble 2 cents. I've used Dreamweaver MX but never Photoshop. I use GIMP instead. You might be interested in a glimpse through this article:
HTML Editors in Linux - A Comparison

However, the article is possibly a couple of years old. For instance, Quanta is listed as version 1.0, and is now 3.3. Bluefish is listed as 0.6, but is now at 0.13, so I don't know what's up with that. Here's Bluefish's website. I haven't yet used these programs yet with Linux, so sorry but I have to just offer that info for what it's worth.

I have used the GIMP a fair amount in its Windows port over the last 1+ year, and can say it is a high-quality program. It doesn't have as many plug-ins as Photoshop, but you can produce high-quality images with it. There are online tutorials, you just have to look around.

You also might consider looking into learning a version control system for when you work on projects with other programmers. Open source is definitely CVS, although you might not be able to use that if working with Windows folks, since CVS is only ported to Windows and not "native."

You might consider finding some webmaster forums and reading the documents and advice they provide there. I'd bet you'll find some handy although of course biased info.

Sorry I can't be more useful.

plenty usefull. thank you.