Jeff Dunlap wrote:

> 1.) Would administration be less flexible on a remote Linux or FreeBSD server?

It depends on which administration tool you use on Windows and whether
it has been ported to Linux and FreeBSD. For example, if you use
FlameRobin it has both Linux and FreeBSD ports, so you wouldn't lose
anything.

> Is there a remote GUI interface similar to 'Remote Desktop Connection' for Windows

Yes. In fact there are many. I prefer using tightvnc. On server you can
run either tightvnc or x11vnc, and on windows/linux client you can use
tightvnc vncviewer, or any other (there are many programs that implement
VNC protocol).

If you are using Linux as a desktop, then you can also forward X11
session directly. There is also X11 server for Windows, but AFAICT it is
not very easy to set up. Please don't allow terminology to confuse you
here - in X11 world, "server" is the program communicating with your
keyboard, mouse and monitor, and "client" is an application that needs
to display itself and accept input.

> or is remote access limited to text and command based?

No. Linux admins prefer text based interface because it is faster,
requires less bandwidth, but is still powerful enough to be able to do
everything.

> Is anyone using Ubuntu with FB?

A lot of people. If you decide to run FB as server, and with to go with
Ubuntu, it's better to choose Ubuntu Server edition. It has happened
many times in the past that something gets broken in Desktop Edition and
if you cannot have any downtime in production, you'd better go with
Server. Please note that running graphical interface on the Linux server
is considered a bad idea by many, so you will probably have a hard time
configuring any server-oriented distro to allow GUI.

If you are concerned about security, it is much better to simply tunnel
all your communication with Firebird via SSH, ZeBeDee or SSL:

http://www.firebirdfaq.org/faq113

and keep using your favorite administration tool on your machine.

> For a Linux single CPU system, is it preferred to run SS or Classic?

It really depends on the number of users and how heavy are the queries:

http://www.firebirdfaq.org/faq25

> The most recent FreeBSD download available on firebirdsql.org appears to be 1.5.5. Does this mean that FB ports for FreeBSD are not as frequent?

Did you check your FreeBSD ports tree? It might contain and newer
version. Anyway, given the level of portability of Firebird code lately,
I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to even compile it yourself.

> EVERYTHING must be done remotely by me.

Learn to use SSH and you can done everything remotely from your desktop.
As you can see in the FAQ page above, creating a secure tunnel to the
server is a one-liner.

HTH

--
Milan Babuskov
http://www.flamerobin.org
http://www.guacosoft.com