[Pdx-pm] RE: [Off Topic] *nix Question

Eric Wilhelm ewilhelm at sbcglobal.net
Fri Jul 23 10:49:14 CDT 2004


# The following was supposedly scribed by
# Stout, Joel R
# on Friday 23 July 2004 10:04 am:

>Now I
>am being faced with a shift in environments.  Unix is the route my
>department is taking and I must adapt.  

kudos to them:)

>I have heard a couple 
>suggestions about transitioning over - CoLinux, running RedHat under
>VMWare, buying an old pc and putting Debian on it....      

A second (older) PC with Debian would be my suggestion.  This leaves you with 
a fallback to something you know and avoids the real hassle, which is 
hardware setup (newer hardware is almost always a headache.)  Get something 
like a 600/700 MHz with 256MB (or more) ram and you'll be set for web, mail, 
and a good deal of Perl hacking.

>Basically I want to be able to learn more about Unix basics and do it
>on my laptop - without changing over my main operating system.  Any
>suggestions from the group?

Get someone who knows what they are doing if you want to install a dual-boot 
on your laptop.  Even then, BACKUP your files.

Sounds like you won't be responsible for administrating the new systems at the 
office.  Maybe cygwin on windows is the way to go.  Then, you learn the 
command-line first (the rest is easy.)

And, by the way, get ready to REALLY love Perl.  The windows/dos shell is a 
rattling piece of junk compared to bash.

--Eric
-- 
Peer's Law: The solution to the problem changes the problem.




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