Looking for free GUI xplatform programmer's IDE rec

[walawak]

I have a small amount of programming experience (from long ago) in C, java, pascal, and visual basic. I'm willing to learn a bit of python if that would help. I now would like to write some very simple cross platform Linux + Windows apps with a GUI, in something as similar to visual basic as possible, that is free.
I want a GUI IDE like visual basic.

The things I have heard about are Kylix, Lazarus, Netbeans, Eclipse and Monodevelop.

I am kind of getting the feeling that Kylix can't make a Windows application without extra stuff that costs money (Delphi libraries?), so I think that is out of the running. Correct?

Is there another IDE other than the ones I mentioned I should consider? I'm hearing from some that Netbeans may be the easiest and most VB-like. Is that probably true?

Thanks for the help. Please don't bother insulting me as a lazy Microsoft-lover or whatever, I won't pay any attention to it or get riled up.

 

[Armitage]

Look into Qt. It's free on Linux. And IIRC it's free on Windows if used for free software.

 

[kamper]

Kylix, from what I understand, is dead. It was the delphi equivalent on linux and so I don't think it was free either. But Borland have moved on to .net and are even trying to get out of the development environment business. Lazarus is supposed to be the free continuation of delphi/kylix so it might be worth checking out if you want to do object-pascal (cool language).

Eclipse and Netbeans I think only have gui builders for java. I doubt they've quite reached the vb level of stupid-simple, but they're progressing.

As for Qt, I know it's a set of libraries, but is it a dev environment too?

 

[Armitage]

Originally posted by: kamper
Kylix, from what I understand, is dead. It was the delphi equivalent on linux and so I don't think it was free either. But Borland have moved on to .net and are even trying to get out of the development environment business. Lazarus is supposed to be the free continuation of delphi/kylix so it might be worth checking out if you want to do object-pascal (cool language).

Eclipse and Netbeans I think only have gui builders for java. I doubt they've quite reached the vb level of stupid-simple, but they're progressing.

As for Qt, I know it's a set of libraries, but is it a dev environment too?

I know Qt jas a very nice GUI builder and integrates with KDevelop. But I don't do much GUI work, so take everything I say on the subject with a grain of salt.