Web/Mail server and usable o/s

corblimey

I want to set up my development machine as a *nix machine (swaying towards Ubuntu or Mint). I'm developing an application and need a few things that my web host won't give me (cron jobs, imap support, etc). I'm not planning on using the box as a live web host (*) Everything I've read so far suggests that I set up the web server, but do not have a gui on it - either dl the server version or the desktop version but not both.

My issue is that would mean developing in XP everything I want to test, moving it to the shared partition, rebooting into Ubuntu, testing what I want to test, finding the inevitable typo rendering the whole thing pointless, rebooting back into XP and starting again. Surely there's better ways of doing this? If I have a desktop tacked onto the front of the webserver, then I can develop exclusively in Ubuntu and forget all about XP while doing this work.

Any advice would be appreciated. (I'm not a complete virgin with *nix, I used Mandrake for a long time before, but eventually it's inability to 'see' my soft modem drove me back to Win 98)

PS (*) I know this may be a dumb question, but if I'm connected to the web 24 hours a day, and have a working secure web server, is there any reason why I'm paying my web host for their services?

leeroybrown

For development a Linux (I'd suggest Ubuntu) desktop running Apache2 and an IMAP daemon sounds perfect.

corblimey

leeroybrown wrote: »

For development a Linux (I'd suggest Ubuntu) desktop running Apache2 and an IMAP daemon sounds perfect.

Ah right, so I don't need the server edition for LAMP development? I thought this was what this meant:

The Server CD provides you all the tools you need to set up a server (including LAMP). It does not come with a GUI (graphical user interface)

rmacm

corblimey wrote: »

Ah right, so I don't need the server edition for LAMP development?

No you don't need the server version of it. You can download the desktop iso and then install Apache, PHP and MySQL on this.

The command: sudo apt-get install apache2, php5, mysql should get you started.

Creamy Goodness

download any distribution, probably ubuntu is your best bet.

you can install lamp as shown above or you could download xampp which packages apache,mysql,phpmyadmin,php,etc into one neat and tidy package.

www.apachefriends.org

Snowbat

Linux distros are flexible - you can easily add any server pakages you like to a desktop-oriented distro, or a GUI and desktop packages to a server-oriented disto. The only difference is the set of default packages.

As for webhost vs. DIY...

Webhost
- quality peering
- lots of bandwidth
- no contention
- redundant power and backbone connections
- generous data transfer allowance
- good support

ISP connetion
- An AUP that may prohibit running servers
- limited upload bandwidth
- throttling/contention
- variable support
- variable reliabiliy

ntlbell

blacknight.ie are now selling vps's at very reasonable prices which you could look into using

they offer a variety of linux distro's and control panels to use with them

disclousure: i dont work for or have any connection with blacknight