New Way To Try Linux

[w8gtf]

In my job, we use VMware's products for creating virtual servers and computers. This is good for testing and management of several virtual servers on one physical server (it also saves rack space).

Anyways, the other night at work, I built an Ubuntu virtual machine at work, and brought it home. VMware offers a free product called 'VMware Player'. This allows you to run pre-created virtual machines on your computer. I currently have an Ubuntu and an MS-DOS virtual machine. You can also download "VMware Appliances" that do specific work.

I just wanted to share this, and I'll be more than happy to provide assistance to anyone wanting to try VMware. The best part of virtual machines over dual booting or live CD's is that you can have both running at the same time in real time. I also, use a 2 gig thumb drive as a down and dirty way of transfering data between the two virtual machines.

[k4avl]

The VMWare server is free, and I tried out XP on a Linux box, worked pretty well.
Also, you can run Linux on a Windows box natively using Cygwin (also free), with or without CoLinux and install the X window system as well. I had good luck with that too.
Both take a bit of reading and trial & error to get working correctly, especially sharing the internet connection, etc.,
but it's a lot of fun.

[KI4ZSQ]

I too am using the VMWare server and have loaded up Fedora 8, Mandreva and with some varying success, Knoppix.

A very easy way to experiment with the different builds if you are like me and just trying to experiment with them.

[K1MDC]

I believe MS's Virtual PC is freely available to the public as well. I just downloaded the 2007 version from my MSDN account, to try and get a development environment up and running for Maemo OS2008 on my Nokia N800.

Our IT guys just set up VMWare ESX Server up and are going through and virtualizing all of our servers. It makes it so much easier for us programmers. If we need a new IIS server, we click and there it is. If you need a Linux Server with MySQL and Apache, click and go.

[w8gtf]

Quote[/b] (K1MDC @ Jan. 21 2008,20:52)]Our IT guys just set up VMWare ESX Server up and are going through and virtualizing all of our servers. It makes it so much easier for us programmers. If we need a new IIS server, we click and there it is. If you need a Linux Server with MySQL and Apache, click and go.
We use ESX at work. I've created a set of "gold" images that are fired up once a month, patched, then shut back down. I have each configured with sysprep so that each one gets a new set of SID's when I fire the machines up.

It's so easy to build new virtual server on my work desktop, test it, and then deploy it after the testing is done. I can literally roll a new server out at work and have it fully ready in less than an hour.

I'm sure your IT staff is going to love the ease of management of using ESX. We're going so far as some of our developers have a 2nd box under their desks for code & testing. We've started converting them from Physical to Virtual so that we can reuse those boxes/discard them. We're at the point that everything that can be virtual, we're making virtual.

At my old job, we had several levels of "networks" going from the dev (for the developers to play with), test (for QA to have full control over and try to break), QA (where QA tested and verified everything was right), pre-prod (final certification of network), and production (live network that the public accessed). With the exception of production, all of the rest of it was virtual, with 10-15 servers per network. This would have been a complete nightmare if they would have been all physical machines.

Quote[/b] (KI4ZSQ @ Jan. 21 2008,20:52)]A very easy way to experiment with the different builds if you are like me and just trying to experiment with them.

That's one of the reasons I started with this. In addition to my Linux VM, I created an MS-DOS VM, and a windows 2k VM. I'm also considering a windows 95 VM. The other VM's will be used to run legacy software I have that I want to mess around with (DOS & 95), and the 2k VM is going to be a safe browsing appliance to keep spyware off of my main installation.

In addition to that, I'm looking at a way to install a virtual machine on an 8 gig thumb drive, then encrypt the whole thing into one large encrypted package. That way I can plug my thumb drive into a unknown computer and still have a safe environment to work from. We're also working to create a VMware ACE virtual machine at work so that instead of myself and the rest of the IT staff using our home computers to VPN into work, we can fire up this secure virtual machine, and VPN into work from there.

Edited to reply to KI4ZSQ.