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

[Dennis McNulty]

I wish I had your problem.  Where I work, our IT dept is trying to get 
rid of Linux machines to free up extra funds to fight off the frequent 
viruses that affect their MSWin machines.

Cygwin from RedHat is good if you still want your Windows apps available 
at the same time.  You can also run your laptop as a server with ftpd, 
mysql and apache, and you can get all the development tools for console 
applications.  It's great for beginners and dabblers.  I haven't had 
much luck with using X-Windows apps with it, though. 

If you want to test GUI apps (such as KDE or Gnome desktops), there are 
several Linuces that boot and run from CD, then let you store data files 
on your hard drive or a USB key.   Two I can think of are Knoppix and 
Mandrake Move.   Of you want to do GUI development, a CD can't hold 
enough libraries, so I'd reccommend a full distribution such as RedHat 
or Mandrake (my favorite) and put it on an old machine.  Dual-booting is 
a hassle if you have to switch OSes more than twice a day.  VMWare is 
rather expensive, about as much as buying another old machine.

-  Dennis McNulty
   (retiring in a year)
=============================================

Stout, Joel R wrote:

>Hola,
>
>Looking for some advice.  I've been a M$ programmer for a while (ASP,
>VB.Net, etc) but always kept a small amount of Perl knowledge in my
>back pocket so I could miraculously glue everything together.  Now I
>am being faced with a shift in environments.  Unix is the route my
>department is taking and I must adapt.  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
>
>*My last email bounced because my address changed.  Hopefully you won't be bothered with two of these emails.
>
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