"My main reason for hesitating to switch to Linux is the fact that, over the past few years, I have invested something like $10.000 on Windows based development tools (ECAD, compilers, etc.). If I am not able to run these under Linux, I'm buggered!"

Take a look at my previous post in this thread regarding Win4Lin. I can't tell you if your specific programs will work under it, but they probably will. I have yet to find a Windows program that doesn't work under Win4Lin--although I'm sure they must exist. Even GoldWave, an audio editing program, works under Win4Lin, and that surprised me.

Win4Lin costs $89 so if you're really interested in moving to Linux and have spent $10k on Windows tools $89 is probably not a huge investment to see if you can make the move. I was hesitant at first but once I moved to Linux and bought Win4Lin I haven't looked back. Believe it or not I even found that my Windows applications run faster under Win4Lin than they did on the same laptop when it had Windows XP installed on it. I'm talking about significantly faster load-times for Word, Visual Basic, Visual C++, and QuickBooks. I definitely wasn't expecting Windows applications to run faster under Linux, but it just goes to show how much bloat Microsoft has in their OS.

Regards,
Craig Steiner