pg_dump on local Windows, pg_restore on Linux?

Couple of questions with porting:

1. I have been playing around with my databases locally on Win XP so
as not to hurt our website traffic. Now I would like to move the
database to a Linux CentOS server. Can I use pg_dump on Windows and
pg_restore it on Linux? If so, any tips on what I should keep in mind
(e.g., manual seems to suggest that pg_restore prefers tar gzipped
format...but I'm not sure if Windows can generate this?)

2. I would like my database to be UTF-8. I issue the command

CREATE DATABASE mydb OWNER me ENCODING 'utf8';

Should I add anything else to it, such as collation? I did not find
any option for that in here:
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.2/static/sql-createdatabase.html

3. Also, just to confirm, if I have utf-8 database, then all tables in
it should be able to take utf-8 data? I would just like these tables
to take whatever I send to them. No error checking or encoding
checking. Can I disable the painful error that PG keeps throwing if
even a single erroneous byte shows up? I'd rather have 'garbage data'
than not go through with the query.

Thanks for any tips!