
This marks huge shift for the Roswell web team as up until I got here it was all windows server 2003 and ASP. Somehow, I convinced everyone that PHP and linux servers is the way to go. I am so glad this is happening.
Virtual Dream Machines
I have Centos 5 running in a virtual machine on my Macbook using vmware fusion

Virtual machines are the freakin' coolest thing ever. I assume that (e:uncutsaniflush) must be going crazy now that he can install even more linuxes on virtual machines. Before I let (e:enknot) use the vaio I had suse running centos, ubuntu and windows in a virtual machine. Do you have a machine running every linux flavor yet, lol?
Anyhow having a duplicate test server on my laptop is amazing. It lets you have the freedom to play around with the exact same server without the worries associated with braking a live server or the cost associated with having a physical test server. PLus, just like everything computer, you can save sattes and undo whatever you did to the guest OS by saving snapshots or backing up you virtual machine to disk or dvd.
It is so convenient too. I can for example drag and drop and shared clipboard between it and my host OS X installation. I couldn't have really imagined it would be this great before, even though I had used virtual PC way back in 1999 with red hat on my blueberry ibook, it wasn't nearly the same as the experience I am having on my 4GB macbook pro now, lol.
Who would have thought I would ever be running osx, windows, and linux all at the same freakin time and be able to integrate them seamlessly. It makes the whole operating system seem so meaningless. Really you should easily be able to run OS x in a virtual machine but apple is against it so there are all kinds of hindrances.
I think it was (e:ajay) who got you to use Centos. I think I mentioned it to you as a good Red Hat clone but I think you actually started using it after talking to him.
Yes, I do like virtual machines. I've been farting around with VMWare for a couple of years now. Lately, I've farting around with qemu as well. The only prob with vm's for me is that i'm running them on an athlon 900 with 518 megs of RAM.
Ok just go here... (e:enknot,40715)
I think it was a combination between language features, online documentation and being able to use the large codebase and framework I had already written. They also all had some experience with PHP in outside projects.
I gave a couple classes a few months back on object oriented programming and that also helped as they were coming from a programmtic ASP classic background .
Actually, I will let (e:enknot) answer this as he is a switcher himself.
"This marks huge shift for the Roswell web team as up until I got here it was all windows server 2003 and ASP. Somehow, I convinced everyone that PHP and linux servers is the way to go. I am so glad this is happening."
What were your sell points? Especially to those who didn't have PHP experience?