My teacher has told us to do an application in which we use CORBA for communicating a C++ server with a Java client. I can do it with the following OS's, in order of preference:
-Windows 7
-Windows 8
-Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy Salamander
Any recommendations on the IDL precompiler for C++?
You can take a look at omniORB, that comes with IDL compiler. It is open source library for C++ and Python. For the Java side I could suggest jacORB