Webarnold.net

A question I’ve often asked my more web development savvy friends is “how do you go about your web development?”  Those friends, being patient with me as always offered up a vareity of solutions from simply installing PHP, MySQL, and Apache on my Windows XP computer, to installing and using WAMP, to buying a Mac, to using a Linux box for development.  Earlier this year my mother-in-law gave me her old Dell Dimension when she got a new laptop.  The computer has an 80GB hard drive (I upgraded it for her a year or so ago when her 20GB HD failed), 866MHz PIII processor, and 384MB of RAM.  In other words, it was ripe for running a Linux environment.  I chose Ubuntu 6.10 “Edgy Eft” desktop version (I wasn’t yet quite ready to jump completely into the command line ONLY environment of the server product).

Since that decision, I’ve literally been struggling with getting everything configured correctly for several months.  It’s a good thing that Ubuntu takes only about twenty minutes to install - because I reformatted and started over many times.  I was very fortunate in that Ubuntu has a big following and thus there is a lot of great documentation out there to assist me in the journey.

I started with the base installation of Ubuntu Desktop 6.10.  I read conflicting reports on various websites about the need (or lack thereof) for an antivirus product on a Linux based system.  Being a tech support worker myself and just generally inclined to lean towards going out of my way to secure a computer system, I installed ClamAV, a simple antivirus program for *nix based systems.  Next would come SSH server, Apache2, PHP5, MySQL, phpMyAdmin, and Samba server.  It took me many tries to get MySQL configured correctly.

As I was struggling with editing various text based configuration files, I discovered an application called “Webmin.”  This made my life sooooo much easier - particularly in the arena of configuring Samba folder shares and access permissions.

I am very proud to say that as of this morning, I have a fully functioning LAMP server with Samba access from my Windows XP box.  I have a WordPress “sandbox” up and running and currently am working on some ideas for new themes.  It is very exciting to finally get this project off of my shoulders.  I have to admit that I was apprehensive when I first started using Linux - would I be able to handle it?  Could I get it functioning the way I want?  While I still am no Linux guru, I do feel that I have picked up some pointers over the past few months and have a functioning Linux box that will (hopefully) serve my web development purposes.

Now if I could only stop being color blind and pick up some 1337 design skills.

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