As Jehnx said, you can write and test your program within the Visual C++ environment, but you'll have to compile it in Linux to make sure it works. Also, make sure that you don't use proprietary Win32 applications. There are compiler-specific commands for C++ (especially within the MS Visual world), and if you use any of those, you will get errors within Linux. For compiling in any *nix environment, I have had the best results using g++. It seems to be more compatible with Visual C++ than other compilers I've tested.

AJ