Which OS for .Net development?

BostonB

Current working on VS2003/SQL2005 projects (and will b for some time) and running on XP at work. But want to do the certifications. At home I'm running Vista 64, VS2005/SQL2005 Express. I installed Server 2008 on one machine and I loved how fast that is compared to Vista 32/64. But I couldn't get right resolutions on my laptop. Getting drivers seems to be a bit a problem.

What do you use, and what do think is the best to stick to moving forwards at the moment.

pwd

xp pro or vista business are fine for sql server and VS.

BostonB

I think I'm running Vista 64 enterprise. Of course theres always a mac...
http://blog.1530technologies.com/2006/08/visual_studione.html

pwd

that should be fine. are you having problems with it on it?

BostonB

Not really. Can't get some widescreen resolutions and it doesn't feel as robust as my machine at work. But no real problems tbh. Just really want to know what other people are using.

pwd

I use xp pro at work and vista business on my laptop. No difference I've noticed beyond having to start VS in admin mode on vista.

DublinWriter

XP Pro. I wouldn't touch Vista with a barge-pole for development as you need all the system resources you can get when you're running VS 2005 and using the developer versions of SQL Server and IIS.

As you know, once you get everything working in VS2005 then you can just deploy it onto a 2000/2003 NT server in a live environment.

BostonB

We moved from 512mb to 4GB recently on our work machines and it made a huge difference in speed using VS/SQL/IIs.

pwd

512 is low though. i've 2gb on my laptop and it's fine with those 3 running (with vista 32 bit)

Malice

I use XP Pro at home and in the office. I probably will have to move to Vista at some stage but I want to put that off for as long as possible!

I definitely agree with having 4Gb of RAM too, it makes the whole system a lot more responsive even with a lot of different applications running.

John_Mc

Currently developing for Sharepoint 2007, so my development machine runs Win XP Pro as the main operating system with VS 2005.

I also run a virtual machine with Windows Server 2003 & Sharepoint server 2007.

With only 2GB's of Ram available I can only assign a GB of ram to each machine, and the result is an incredibly slow & painful experience

To make matters worse, there's no click & drag interface for controls and page elements when developing Sharepoint webparts, so everything has to be added programmaticly. It's very tedious & time consuming and I'm going getting very frustrated at work these days!

M$ put absolutely no effort into helping developers work on the Sharepoint platform :mad:

Evil Phil

I'm using XP pro and its fine.

Ginger

John_Mc wrote: »

Currently developing for Sharepoint 2007, so my development machine runs Win XP Pro as the main operating system with VS 2005.

I also run a virtual machine with Windows Server 2003 & Sharepoint server 2007.

With only 2GB's of Ram available I can only assign a GB of ram to each machine, and the result is an incredibly slow & painful experience

To make matters worse, there's no click & drag interface for controls and page elements when developing Sharepoint webparts, so everything has to be added programmaticly. It's very tedious & time consuming and I'm going getting very frustrated at work these days!

M$ put absolutely no effort into helping developers work on the Sharepoint platform :mad:

Copy the SharePoint .NET DLLs from your guest to your host machine and install them into the GAC, and set the deployment of the project to another host server on your network. You can do the development on your host and it will work fine.

Ginger

Currently using XP Pro with a virtual machine running Windows Server 2003. Dev is VS2008 Development Edition. I dont run SQL Server locally as its not needed, just easier connect to a dedicated SQL box and use that.

Dont run IIS on my machine either, again all deployment done to a remote machine.

Eoin

malice_ wrote: »

I use XP Pro at home and in the office. I probably will have to move to Vista at some stage but I want to put that off for as long as possible!

I definitely agree with having 4Gb of RAM too, it makes the whole system a lot more responsive even with a lot of different applications running.

Can XP address 4GB of RAM? I'm not sure it can.

Ginger

64Bit can, 32Bit cant.. there was a big thread on this in the windows forum a while back

kayos

VS2008 is a total RAM hog, I have seen the difference in performance for the same Solution only ever improve with the addition of RAM.

Its a simple solution with a business layer and then the UI. The database is on a remote server.

On the client site they have me working on a XP machine with P4 3GHz 1gig of RAM, crap hard disk (single slow SATA) and its bloody painful. Honestly can go make coffee while I wait for the solution to get into debug. Funny how the contractors get the worst machines that just end up slowing them down thus increasing dev costs for the client.

Working from my office I had a Vista ultimate 64bit work station Core 2 2.4Ghz, 2Gig and a stiped array of SATA disks at 7200rpm. Debug was painful but not as bad as the XP machine. Honestly expected it to work a hell of a lot faster given massive jump in spec compared to the XP box (wishful thinking with Vista :P). Only when I upgraded to 4Gig RAM did the VS2008 actually work at a decent level of performance. Any one else I have spoken to in relation to VS2008 has said the same. Honestly MS's memory requirements are going up and up and the only way to satisfy them is with a 64Bit OS which of course just leads to the driver pain of 64Bit.

Any way long story short if you want a dev environment I would most likely stick to a x64 XP, even though I never liked XP for dev myself. Vista is a hog, new versions of VS are hogs and your gonna need 4Gig ram if your doing anything near an enterprise level of development and not want to pull your hair out while waiting for things to load up.

Honestly if I have to stare at "Loading Master Page....." for anything more than about 2 seconds it makes me cry...oooo finally this thing went into debug... I hit F5 before writing this :mad:

Ginger

Strange... I am running VS2008 on a Windows 2003/MOSS 2007 virtual machine with 1GB of RAM and its running faster than that and I am debugging workflow which redeploys to the GAC and has to restart IIS/MOSS (that is a bit slow but still returns in 5 seconds)..

What are you building that is making it that slow..

BostonB

XP 64 is not meant to be great. Maybe I'll stick to Vista x64 for the time being and add more Ram.

Ginger

John_Mc wrote: »

Currently developing for Sharepoint 2007, so my development machine runs Win XP Pro as the main operating system with VS 2005.

I also run a virtual machine with Windows Server 2003 & Sharepoint server 2007.

With only 2GB's of Ram available I can only assign a GB of ram to each machine, and the result is an incredibly slow & painful experience

To make matters worse, there's no click & drag interface for controls and page elements when developing Sharepoint webparts, so everything has to be added programmaticly. It's very tedious & time consuming and I'm going getting very frustrated at work these days!

M$ put absolutely no effort into helping developers work on the Sharepoint platform :mad:

Just as a followup.. how to install Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1 on Vista