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I'd suggest playing around in a VM instead; you don't want to hose your laptop.
by joubert 16y ago
I'd suggest playing around in a VM instead; you don't want to hose your laptop.
- TrevorBurnham 16y agoWhich VM software would you suggest? Let's say I'm on a Mac.
- codesink 16y agoI'm pretty happy with VMware Fusion. http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/ http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/
- nfriedly 16y agoI like VMware fusion provided you use the isolated mode. Trying to "fuse" windows 7 into OS X is the only thing thats crashed my macbook so far.
- mitjak 16y agohttp://virtualbox.org http://virtualbox.org I wouldn't have recommend it about a year ago but nowadays it's caught up with others quite nicely feature wise, is very fast, supports snapshots and USB, and is completely free.
- Goosey 16y agoI second this! I wrote a post ( http://goosey.posterous.com/the-good-news-is-you-dont-have-to-choose http://goosey.posterous.com/the-good-news-is-you-dont-have-t... ) recently about this development strategy. It has many advantages beyond the "you don't have to worry about hosing your laptop" one, for sure!
- joubert 16y agoI've been using (Oracle) VirtualBox and am happy with it. I'm on Snow Leopard and have 4GB RAM.
- SkyMarshal 16y ago/Second VBox. I'm using it on Ubuntu to play around with Arch, Nexenta, OpenSolaris, and WinXP. It just works.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- evilduck 16y agoJust an FYI, VirtualBox images are not easily transferred to VMware, and vice versa. If you're only ever on a Mac, I vote VMware Fusion, but if you're going to change vm host environments, I'd suggest VirtualBox.
- pavs 16y agoOr just Wubi to make an Ubuntu install you don't have to hose anything.
- cullenking 16y agoI'd disagree, but that's because it's way too easy to walk away from the VM when you need to do something and don't want to futz around. Jump feet first and use Linux as your main OS. If you are doing development work, it can easily surpass Windows, and is comparable (or superior) to OSX as well. Of course, this doesn't apply if you are doing graphic design stuff, however, Windows can live inside a VM for that sort of stuff. If you are doing web dev, you'll need a VM for Vista/Win7 and for XP anyways.
- joubert 16y agoEven if Linux is your main OS, I would still use a VM, because you can reproduce a server environment more closely, isolates that work from your "personal stuff", allows powerful features such as snapshotting, and enables you to simulate multiple servers and/or clients (virtualization) on a single box, when for example playing with a distributed date store.