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

T. William Schmidt will at williamschmidt.com
Fri Jul 23 12:56:59 CDT 2004


>.  I have heard a couple
>suggestions about transitioning over - CoLinux, running RedHat under
>VMWare, buying an old pc and putting Debian on it....
>
>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?  Any experiences with CoLinux?
>
>Thanks for any help,
>
>
>Joel Stout (PDX PM Uberlurker)
>Calaban on PerlMonks
>EDI Systems Engineer

Hello Joel,

You are ahead of me because you already have the laptop.  I want a ThinkPad 
T41 running SuSE 9.1 (2.6 kernel).  Put Linux on your laptop, whichever 
distro you favor.  Install VMWare on your host Linux and run one or more 
virtual Windows in VMWare.  Why?  With Linux as your host OS and Windows in 
virtual space, you have a perfect client/server development 
platform.  VMWare multiplexes the network hardware so that both server and 
clients share the devices.  You could do virtual Linux on a Windows VMWare 
but this is client/server backwards for most uses of these two 
platforms.  How many companies are writing Unix clients to connect to 
Windows servers?

I intend to buy the ThinkPad from http://www.emperorlinux.com/ with SuSE 
pre-installed.  I believe I can install Linux myself, there is certainly 
enough documentation on the Internet, but I don't want to have to search 
for drivers.  EmperorLinux will get the latest drivers, do a burn in and 
provide after sale support, which is worth it to me.  Their depot repair 
facility will even for a modest fee install the Linux of your choice on 
your existing laptop.  Not a bad service and the primary advantage is that 
they get the drivers, resolve all the dependencies and save you the chore.

I understand IBM is selling Linux laptops in Europe and the prediction is 
that they will be selling these in the U.S. next year.  I also understand 
that IBM is internally testing Linux desktops in the mode of eating their 
own dog food, prior to a major retail effort to sell Linux desktops.  I 
can't wait to see which big PC vendor (IBM, HP or Dell) is the first to 
embrace Linux on the desktop in a big way and provide a Doze retail 
alternative.

Regards,
Will Schmidt

WilliamSchmidt.com, LLC
11201 NW 77th Street
Terrebonne, OR  97760
541 504-0290
will at williamschmidt.com
http://www.williamschmidt.com/




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