[TriLUG] A true newbie

[Jeremy P]

On Tue, 30 Apr 2002, Lisa C. Boyd wrote:

> 
> More questions regarding what Jeremy wrote: I'm assuming that using either 
> the multiple partitions or the separate hard drive that you can only run 
> one OS at a time. That may not work for me if I need to test my web server 
> stuff from different browsers. I do have another computer I could wipe, but 
> it's not that fast. I'll have to check on this some more.

Only one OS can be running at a time; the OS is what interfaces the
software with the hardware of your computer, so this makes sense. However,
there is software available that can emulate or simulate another OS on top
of Linux.  The best two are commercial: vmware and Win4Lin.  I personally
use Win4Lin for a business application that I must use Windows for, and it
works wonderfully.  I also use it to test my web pages in Windows
browsers.  Others on this list have used vmware and have recommended it
highly.

There is free software called "wine" (wine stands for wine is not an
emulator, but in real life it is) that allows you to run some Windows
applications under Linux, but it has generally been quite inferior to the
above two applications, although it has been improving quickly.  Wine is
quite difficult to install (compared to Win4Lin or vmware), so I wouldn't
recommend it for a beginner.

It's great that you have some experience with the basic Unix-style
commands; this is one of the biggest hurdles for new Linux users.  That
will give you a good jumpstart.

What are the specs on your older computer?  One of the core strengths of
Linux is its ability to run on older hardware, especially if you go back
to older distributions, which are really still quite adequate
today.  Unless you have something really ancient, it should be able to
handle Apache/PHP/MySQL/whatever just fine in a testing/development
environment.

Hope this helps,

Jeremy