This new convert is a developer of MS Office applications
 

Hi all,

If you were a small time business automation developer with Microsoft Excel, Access, etc then...

How would you learn more about Linux?

1) I'm interested in finding a neat platform to integrate an email client with a database and forms. Plus other small business tools like POS software, accounting packages, etc

2) I've heard python is great, but what is the most 'portable' language that I should focus on for a start? I'm not so interested in the Webapps side atm.

One or two pointers would help me get into Linux!

Thanks,
John

The most common answer to question 1 is LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP); you'll find hundreds, if not thousands, of LAMP packages out there in the world for doing what you're describing. The beauty of LAMP is that an application is running on "your" server and is available via a web page to any client, anywhere; i.e., no software installed on the client side (and no updating, patching, blah, blah client systems). The LAMP model may be modified to use pretty much any DMBS -- MySQL is the most common but PostgreSQL, Oracle and others fit in too. PHP is the interface between the web page and the data base and it supports a large selection of DBMS if you don't like MySQL or would prefer to use something else.

Python is one of many; another commonly-used language is Perl. Both are scripting languages that can access a DBMS and are useful for developing web-based applications.

Look too at LibreOffice.org (http://www.libreoffice.org/) and OpenOffice.org (http://www.openoffice.org/) -- these are full-boat office suites (they pretty much emulate Microsoft Office but don't cost anything and are available for any platform you can think of). Both feature DBMS hooks.

One place you might want to take a look at is SourceForge.net (https://sourceforge.net/) and search the categories for applications you might be interested in.

There are books, there are web sites by the thousands that provide an entry to Linux, how to use it, how to develop software for it and who knows what all. Look at the tutorials here a LQ, ask questions and, mostly, have a good time.

Hope this helps some.

Python is a very handy 'glue' language for scripting all sorts of things... including cross-platform GUI applications.

Python can also be used as a scripting language (in the form of the PyUno module) for Open/LibreOffice.

Good info from tronayne.
In addition and more generically, here's a good intro to the cmd line http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz.
Here's a site that lists most of the currently available distros www.distrowatch.com
Last but not least, a load of Linux books/manuals (free to read) www.linuxtopia.org