As others have pointed out, if you have reasons to be on Linux, then DBD::Proxy is the way to go. But you would need to make this decision based on other criteria than what you've told us. If the only thing you're doing is DBI, then your scripts using ActivePerl + DBI will be essentially identical to your Linux + DBI scripts minus the DBD::Proxy stuff so there's nothing about DBI or your database interactions that will be magically improved by moving to Linux. Besides, given your nick, aren't you destined to use ActivePerl?