I am looking at making a xoops related utility but I am curious what computers most users are using to access their hosts. The idea is you can run this program on your desktop to access your host(s) directly.

If I use C++ I will have to use generic (NON MS) libraries and cross compile. Decent debugging but the most programming since I have to do most of the work myself.

If I use Java the debugging utilities are poor but looks like it may be the most universal.

If I use C# it is made to be used with .NET and as with Java you would need a machine dependent player to use them. C# will allow me to build the application faster and the most bug free.

I believe all three can be done for Linux, Windows and Mac but curious if there is any experience out there with .net outside of windows.

Planning to make this utility use FTP to access the files on the host and use mysql connect to connect to the mysql host. However this would need the mysql host to allow remote connections. I am curious if most allow remote connections or if remote connections are disallowed as a security feature?

I am a little down the road with this but wanted to get some feedback to start getting my mind around which direction I want to go with this.