Attention Java gurus! Linux sucks, I want my OpenBSD!

[Jeff Ross <jross_(_at_)_openvistas_(_dot_)_net>]

Greetings all!

Our local animal shelter here has an OpenBSD firewall protecting their 
network (including a sorry NT4 server) from the internet and an OpenBSD 
driven backup system, using samba to duplicate the information on the 
NT4 server to a platform I can reliably back up.  Yes, except for the 
hardware I had to buy to do the backups (a DVD burner), this is a 
donation from Open Vistas Networking.

Their current animal tracking software is PetWhere, an abandoned 
project that runs on Windows (and hence the NT4 server).  Support (ha!) 
for PetWhere will really stop in March, so they are looking for a 
replacement.

If I had the time (I really don't), I'd write the whole thing from 
scratch using PostgreSQL as the backend, with PHP/apache as the front 
end.  Right now they are evaluating a Windows package using M$ 
$QLServer that will do the job, possibly, but it is going to be at 
least $13,000 by the time they upgrade the NT4 to Server200x, get a 
licensed version of SQLServer (yuck!) and buy client licenses for all 
of the above.

Needless to say, this money could be better spent in at least 13,000 
ways, but they really need a system that will work and get in place and 
on-line pretty quickly.

There is a ray of hope!  There is a project on SourceForge called 
Animal Shelter Manager.

	http://sheltermanager.sourceforge.net/

This seems perfect, but...it is awfully linux-centric, with installlers 
for Fedora Core/Mandrake, Debian and generic linux.

I don't want to see these folks throw away $13,000, so I took a 
computer and installed Debian linux to try to get this thing to run.  
Now, there's a waste of time!  Wasn't there a thread not to long ago on 
misc@ about the beauty of apt-get?  Now that I've had first hand 
experience with apt-get, and Debian in general, all I have to say is 
"get real".

The requirements for ASM are pretty straightforward:

	Java Virtual Machine
	MySQL
	ftp server

The recommended/required JVM is Kaffe 1.1.4 , but there doesn't seem to 
be a port for that (although 1.0.6 is available).  The others are no 
brainers, although I'd love to use PostgreSQL instead, but I can live 
with MySQL.

So, java gurus, should I try to hack the kaffe-1.0.6 port to upgrade to 
1.1.4?  Is there a better JVM I can use?  I know _nothing_ about Java, 
so be gentle ;-)

Thanks in advance,

Jeff