What a bold step. Got Suse 10.0 to install and at 1600 resolution it's
stunning. Suse 7.0 wanted to only use 640, 16 colours and crowd out my OK buttons!!!--yech!

Now, can you suggest an opensource database product? And C++ SDI. I'm spoiled with MFC and need to get Linux saavy quick.

Does the message system in C++ and Windows still work in Linux?
Is there something similar to MSDN for Linux programmers?

You can configure any distro for a variety of screen resolutions.

Database: MySQL

C++ SDI---what's that?

Programming support? In about 1 bazillion places, including here.

One of the biggest differences in Linux and OpenSource is that help is basically all over the place--sometimes organized by often not. The good news is that Google finds it pretty quickly.

SDI--Software Development Interface
or
SDK--Software Development Kit

If you're looking for an interface like Visual C++ (IDE), then the Eclipse program would be a good start.
To what "message system" are you referring?

I've programmed with Windows in C++ and there is the inherent messaging system where pressing a button sends a message and a function responds to it.
I presume it's the same in Linux.

That indeed seems to be pretty much standard C++. As long as you don't need messages like Windows dialog boxes and stuff, I suppose it'll work fine on Linux.

However, the most important thing is that your code may not use any Windows libraries. If it does, it can't run on Linux (except perhaps via Wine).
So, I propose that you start off by taking a look at your #include's and check to see if any of the libs are Windows-only.

First to avoid misconceptions: As far as I know SDI means 'Single Document Interface' and is a document-style of MFC. I guess what you meant was an API (Application Programming Interface). API's allow you to communicate with your OS, and yes, of course Linux has also an API. But this is not the same as the Windows API. The "massaging system", you mentioned, is part of the win32-API and is wrapped under the MFC (i guess you used this and not the API itself?). There are several libraries out there that act similar like MFC and allow you to build GUIs, multi-threads and Socket-Apps similar like you did under Windows, but they are by far not the same! The three most common such libraries are:
- GTK+
- QT (this is not under GPL!)
- wxWidgets

As for IDEs, there are several (free ones) out there. Take a look here to get started and then try around:
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Devtools/ides.html

Also have a look at:
www.codeblocks.org
which I cannot recommend high enough!

Very good Flesym.

I'll sink my teeth into those right away.

I beg to differ... Qt comes with a dual license, it's NOT free
for Windows, but for Linux FOSS development it's GPLed.

And as far as I'm concerned it rocks.


Cheers,
Tink

Flesym has a good list of C/C++ IDEs there, but here the one which i love the most.

Anjuta