Lifelog

IN my previous posts i sounded pretty convinced that i would be working with Ubuntu (Linux) from now on. Working with that OS for 2 weeks made me realize that i would always encounter some compability issues using the current OS.

As a webdesigner i use Zend Studio 5 (IDE) to develop PHP code. This IDE has some amazing features like advanced debugging, variable watches. Before going over to linux i knew there was a linux version available of this IDE. After installing the IDE for linux, i noticed it was alot slower then the windows variant. Because i was losing alot of time looking for ways to speed up the IDE, to make the fonts look better i decided togo back to load my WinXP image again, and start working from that.
I have alot of projects at this moment and maybe this is not the good moment to go for a new development environment, more news later…

Like i told you before i need Microsoft Outlook at my work. Thats the only reason that i had the windows setup for a long time, dual boot systems are not very handy, especially when you cannot access your mail on both operating systems. For a long time i already knew there were other solutions, emulating windows in a linux environment (Crossover Office, Win4LinPro, Win4Lin, Qemu with KQemu, VMWare Workstation). In my case i took my shot using the biggest name, VMWare

VMware Workstation

VMware Workstation is powerful desktop virtualization software for software developers/testers and enterprise IT professionals that runs multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single PC. Users can run Windows, Linux, NetWare, or Solaris x86 in fully networked, portable virtual machines – no rebooting or hard drive partitioning required. VMware Workstation delivers excellent performance and advanced features such as memory optimization and the ability to manage multi-tier configurations and multiple snapshots.

The VMWare installation went pretty flawless, after installing/compiling some dependencies my laptop (Asus V6) showed the VMWare Workstation windows. I was surprised at the user-friendly interface which allowed me to quickly create a ‘virtual machine’ and start installing WinXP. I choose for a virtual machine with 512Mb of RAM (i have 1024 in total) with a diskspace of 8GB (more then enough for Windows/Outlook/Office). I inserted the WindowsXP Professional cd, and the first time i got it right, after 40 minutes of cdrom noise & a high cpu load i got it up and running.

Screenshots will be up soon…