If you are interested in using some linux, your suggestion of a secondary server is a good one. You can keep a windows workstation, so you have your familiar ide/editor/whatever, and mount the linux filesystem as a windows drive using samba. It really is quite easy - I know windows people who have done it without too much trouble by following a simple linux for dummies type book.

As for the development environment, you really have a double barrelled language/development choice. My biased opinion is that you should consider the following combinations:

NB: the number of stars indicate's my experience with the environment which is not necessarily the same as how I would rank them.

Each of these has different pro's and con's and are good/better/best for different purposes. Ideally play with all of the above - they can all run on Windows or Linux.

In reply to Re: What's a good website framework? by aufflick
in thread What's a good website framework? by SamCG

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.