Cool, that's good to know. I'm used to Oracle but I guess there can't be too many differences between Oracle and MySQL...
Cool, that's good to know. I'm used to Oracle but I guess there can't be too many differences between Oracle and MySQL...
As people have already stated Gaming is not a strong point for linux, that does not mean linux doesnt have any games, just recently a client that is simular to "Steam" has been released called "Desura" http://www.desura.com/ that offers indie developers to publish their games on steam and desura.
If you want to try linux just out of curiosity, I would suggest downloading the LiveCD iso, burning that to a CD then booting from it. Your PC will run directly off the CD and will not alter anything at all until you commit to a permanant install to your HDD.
Ubuntu is just one of many forms of linux you can read about other distros at http://distrowatch.com i personally run archlinux on my HTPC as its lightweight, fast and secure.
If you're used to the power and flexibility available in ASP.NET, and you're already working in C#, you will find the transition to PHP slow and painful, I assure you. I use PHP for most of my home projects, and learned on PHP and Perl before I ever touched even classic ASP, but after working with ASP.NET / C# in my day job for pushing 4 years I'm seriously considering migrating all my home projects to .NET too. If you've got the time and patience to spend a fairly lengthy period relearning how to do a significant proportion of basic tasks from scratch that's fair enough, but go into it understanding that it will take time and effort: don't think you're going to spend a week reading docs and then you'll be able to reproduce any .NET site you've developed in PHP..
Also, if you learned on .NET and are used to working entirely within ASP.NET webforms (I don't, I use my own approach to ASP.NET programming) you'll need to take a crash course in web standards and handling http traffic properly, because I've yet to meet a developer who learned on .NET who can do that right (of course I haven't met you, so you could be an exception). There's a very different paradigm to PHP development.
All that said, being skilled in both PHP and .NET would be a very valuable combination and worth considering (although don't forget that you can just as easily install Apache, PHP and MySQL on a Windows box as you can a linux box!).
The "Live CD" can also be installed on a USB Drive. For those with the know how it's even possible to setup the drive so that it's writable. That means you can set up your whole computer, everything you every use (assuming it will fit on the USB thumb), carry that with you and use it to boot any hardware you ever have to use. This can be very useful if (like me), you ever have to travel other offices and use the PCs they have there.
Another alternative, if a VM is too unstable, or a Live USB/CD is too slow and/or temporary, then you could also try the Ubuntu Wubi installer. That installs Ubuntu as a Windows app. On start you get a choice of which OS to boot into, but if you decide you don't like Ubuntu, you just uninstall it in windows. So it gives you dual boot without having to mess about with disk partitions.
http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/windows-installer
This Windows installer (Wubi) will help you to run Ubuntu within your current system.
Wubi is an officially supported Ubuntu installer for Windows users. It can install and uninstall Ubuntu in the same way as any other Windows application. It's simple and safe.
There's one good reason - wanting to multiskill for future career development. There's plenty of PHP jobs out there, and being able to do both brings in the possibility of consulting on migrations, ports and project merges, if that sort of thing would interest you.
Good point though, I keep forgetting about .net on linux (for which I apologise most sincerely!). I must look in to dropping it onto my VPS and having a play... could make some of my side-project development a *lot* easier...
Last edited by scaryjim; 23-01-2012 at 01:17 AM.
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