hcg


Virtually identical to the real thing

5 years ago, I came across VirtualBox.

VirtualBox

Ever since then, I’ve had Debian Linux running in a virtual machine alongside Windows 7. Before that, I had to dedicate a machine to running a full fledged LAMP stack.

This week I created a machine to run Debian Jessie, to take over the duties of development server from a 5 year old machine who started it’s life running “Lenny” and who is now running “Wheezy”, the stable branch of Debian before “Jessie”.

I could of easily upgraded “Wheezy” to “Jessie”, but the beauty of virtual machines is that given enough disk space, you can create new ones. This way I could test my websites out with the new versions of Apache, MySQL and PHP before committing to “Jessie”.

The “Lenny” machine was just a server, I decided to utilize “Jessie” as a desktop/server. I now have a Gnome 3 desktop, running full screen, on my second monitor. Gave it one processor, 2GB of ram, 100GB of disk and it’s own internal IP address. This machine rocks, I spend more time on my secondary monitor these days, tweaking Gnome.

Eventually, I want to get me one of those super light laptops to dual boot Windows 10 and Debian “Jessie”, for those days when I want to code in bed.

Futures made of virtual insanity – now
Always seem to, be govern’d by this love we have
For useless, twisting, our new technology
Oh, now there is no sound – for we all live underground