Wednesday 23 September 2009

Linux and Microsft in bed on my desktop and I love it

Facebook | My Photos - KDE KIPI Import/Export Plugin Photos WSS 2 image running in VirtualBox on Linux machine.

I hope this does not get me flamed again by the Linux community. Strangely that when I write about Linux, which I love, I sometimes get flamed by Linux users. Its a rather "different" kind of community that the much more low key Microsoft community. I do envy their dedication to Open Source and I will leave that there.

As for this post, the requirement I had was to make use of some older hardware I had. The stuff was not cheap and I would like to use it.

My work is in SharePoint so I need virtual machines to run through installation and configuration tests on my desktop. Essentially my job is working on VMs of Winodws 2003 and 2008 running different installaions of SharePoint and writing about it and talking about it to the team.

Frankly the Micrsoft options for a Pentium 4 Dua Core with 1GB of RAM is pretty ugly. This box I am working on will not run Vista, and probably forget Windows 7.

So that leaves XP or Windows 2003. I have built the box previously using Windows 2003. Windows Sever 2003 is the best OS Microsoft ever made, it is stable and easy to work with.

Problem is that it is a server, you can't run all your everday fun stuff. For me that is a chess game, Second Life, Flock, and some video games.

Well the answer I have found is to install the Linux Ubuntu 9.04 with Sun VirtualBox. VirtualBox is an excellent tool on my install and I am finding that the Virtual machines run better than on the Windows XP 2GB ram Centrino machine I try to work with.