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jdrago999
<p>
If the question were, instead...
</p>
<blockquote><i>"How do I make this completely Microsoft-dependent software system work on Linux?"</i></blockquote>
<p>
...my response would have been basically the same, but in reverse - <b>Use Perl.</b> Sure, there's Mono (which does work fairly well) but for something like this - a piece of software with a GUI that must run on users' desktops - you are asking for trouble if you do anything outside of Microsoft's preordained canon.
</p>
<p>
If you don't believe me - that writing GUI code on Windows is a pain with Perl - ask the nice folks who have been working on [http://padre.perlide.org/| "Padre"] for the last few years. Combine a simple language (comparatively) like C# and a drop-dead-simple IDE like Visual Studio and, well, basically anyone capable of right-clicking and typing "Hello World" can make a network-deployable windows GUI application. That bar is set pretty high (I know) but I suppose the line has to be drawn somewhere.
</p>
<blockquote><i>"So -- let's face it. You win. You've proven you're better than everyone else here. You can leave, smug in the self-assured knowledge that you are superior, that you have all the right answers, and that you are better than me."</i></blockquote>
<p>
Smug? Maybe popping one's bubble for their own good will be misread as smug. Your skills as a competent Perl programmer put you in a great position to learn C# (enough, anyway) quickly - very quickly. In fact most of the "innovations" I've seen in C# over the last few years have been in Perl since version 5.0 came out or earlier. To me, C# seems to be stuck in catch-up mode, trying to mimic what's going on in Perl and Ruby.
</p>
<p>
And what's with all this "Oooh I'm not <b><i>man enough</i></b> to xyz" - popping this perceived vibe of "Perl is the only tool in my box so it's the only tool I'll use" in the OP - however rough and bruising to your ego it might have been - was probably necessary.
</p>
<p>
Sheesh.
</p>
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