[Pdx-pm] Perl Development on Windows

[DHMedley at aol.com]

>>Second, if you are as wedded to *NIX as the other responders were, just buy a copy of Virtual PC and load any particular flavor of *NIX you are comfortable with.  I can vouch for Slackware 10, Novell Linux Desktop ( preview ), and Gentoo working quite well with it.   You have to use either 16 bit or 32 bit video -- there is no 24.

>If you go this route, do it the other way around.  Windows running on Unix using vmware or some such.  You want the less stable operating system running on the more stable one.  When Windows crashes you want it just taking down Windows, not the whole system.  Then you don't lose all your work and you don't have to wait for the whole machine to reboot.

My experience with VMWare was many years ago and not very satisfactory ; I stayed away from "virtual" anything for a couple of years.  It has probably improved, and I wouldn't know.  I have Virtual PC running most everything I need to, including W2K3 Server for IIS 6.0 work.

I don't enter into the "more stable" argument anymore as most of the data both sides cite is very out-of-date.  As an example, NOT an argument starter, the Linux comparison of kernel 2.6.x to Windows 98 or code base 4.  This is germane in countries where the general population cannot afford XP at present pricing, and/or worse, lives on bootlegged copies of the last version of Windows before Windows Product Activation, but not here and now in Portland.   I have seen the opposite arguments on the MS campus in Redmond, e.g. Windows XP SP2 ( at the time RC1 ) vs. Linux kernel 2.4.22.
I had Windows machines during my previous employment which never crashed since XP RC1 in Feb. 2001 through my leaving in June, 2004.  It has not been any problem on either OS for quite a while, as long as I kept them current.

My point of the original post was that if the gentleman asking for help was going to have to work on a Windows machine, rather than just FOR one, he could have his *NIX without pain.

Dennis H. Medley
Cymberlaen Software