MillsMash

Over the past few years and more notably over the last 12 months Linux has started to make real in-roads into the traditional MS Windows market place with its inclusion on OEM systems from Dell, IBM and HP as well as the likes of the OLPC and cheap Netbooks. This has not just been driven by a desire to reduce costs but also by the fact that Linux has matured greatly over the years and some new flavours are really starting challenge MS Windows with regard to usability and functionality. Couple this with MS move to ‘open up’ MS Word document standards so that they can now be easily opened & edited in other programs due to their XML nature and suddenly there are very few reasons not to at least try out Linux.

Other than some very basic Unix monkeying back at university in 1997 I’ve not explored Linux at all and being a techie/geek that was just was not on. Especially seeing as you can now get VMware Virtual Server for free. Using a ‘virtual machine / server / computer’ allows me to install Linux on my laptop from within XP without it affecting XP in the slightest. The virtual machine appears as a new program within XP so I can use both simultaneously with only a minor hit on performance. As my laptop has a dual core 2.4 Ghz processor and 4Gb of RAM it can easily handle running Windows XP as a main OS and Linux running from within VMware. Hell I could also run XP in VMware as well and it wouldn’t blink however that would require a new license for XP if one was to stay legit. As the basic VMWare server and Ubuntu are completely free doing this costs’ me nothing more than disc space!

So I’ve downloaded the latest version of VMware & Ubuntu and mapped the Ubuntu installation (ISO) to a new VMware machine. Once I turned it on it happily booted into the Ubuntu installer and away it went. It was simple to install with no issues what’s so ever and now I have a Linux on my laptop without any concerns about it corrupting Windows.

But, what’s the point in all this if I’ve already got XP & Office & everything else I need happily running on my laptop other than as a proof of concept and to confuse people looking over my shoulder? In an acronym: LAMP! LAMP stands for Linux, Apache, MySql and PHP and represents a series of packages you can install on your server to have a fully fledged web server.

Before I created this blog I had never done any ‘real’ work with PHP or MySql but when I saw that my hosting company was providing a means to roll out WordPress easily to my account I thought ‘why not give it (Wordpress & Blogging) ago’. That meant getting to grip in some ways with PHP and MySql to install the software and configure the blog to look & feel how I wanted. Admittedly installation was very easy and the only PHP I’ve so far had to do is filtering posts for specific pages but coding it is none the less.

Unfortunately the version of WordPress offered by my host is quiet old and out-of-date so having got to grips with that version of WordPress I wanted to see what else I could do as well as what the newer versions offered. The only way to do that was to install WordPress myself and I sure as hell was not going to load XP up with yet more server software etc. to try it out. This is where the beauty of a virtual machine comes in, I now have a fully fledged Linux installation (admittedly minus any pretty interfaces due to VM graphics card limitations) with LAMP and WordPress installed. I’ve also installed WinMin which is a web based GUI for administering a range of items including MySql, Apache as well as the OS and I’ve been very impressed with it. I can now play away with all the packages to my hearts content without threatening the stability of anything but a ‘virtual’ test system.

OK, I have to admit its not gone entirely smoothly. During first attempt at installing WordPress I managed to corrupt MySQL and the only way I found to resolve it was to completely whip the machine L There may have been an easier way but everything I tried seemed to make the matters worse and as I had no data on the machine it was easier to wipe it and start again. This is where Virtual Machines come into their own as not only does formatting it not affect the main XP system but all the data for it is stored as a single file in a directory on my laptop. This not only means that I can back-up the system at different stages extremely easily but I can also spawn infinite versions of the OS just by copying the file and mapping it to a new virtual machine!

My experiences so far with Ubuntu and LAMP have been varied. I’ve been incredibly impressed with how easy certain things are to do and the wealth of programs available from the initial installation as well as through the package installed. However, other ’simple’ things like refreshing network interfaces, installing packages which are not on the main list and updating some packages has been a nightmare. Needless to say a lot of it includes command line usage which I don’t mind if only I knew the commands. On the plus side the web is full of answers to the majority of the questions & issues I have had, Google is your friend J

I would highly recommend to any geek / techie / developer to have a go, you’ll be surprised how easy it is and it does not cost a penny. However I would say that Ubuntu (Linux) is not quite ready for non-IT-literate people like your granny but it’s not far off.

I’ll keep you posted on my experiences…