Linux Play Options

If you're attending a Linux/UNIX/Perl class you may want to try Linux for yourself at home. There are a variety of options which this page will try to weigh.

cygwin under Windows.

Run cygwin under Windows. Won't run Oracle, but its easy to get going. Check out http://www.cygwin.com.

*nix under VMWare

Run some UNIX or Linux under VMWare. If you've got over a gig of RAM on the workstation, this makes a nice solution and opens up lots of fun possibilities for testing alternative operating systems.

Dual-boot

Dual-boot Linux (or some other UNIX flavor) and Windows. If you want to experience Linux without the virtualization tax this is a good choice.

Reuse old PC

Find some "P.O.S." PC with at least a 1GHz processor and 512M of RAM and install Fedora (http://fedora.redhat.com) or CentOS on it. These are the two best choices for Linux distributions. CentOS is RHEL recompiled and free, so it'll be stable for a long time and we run it on all of our servers. Fedora doesn't have support for as long (1yr vs 5yrs), but its more current and more appropriate for desktops and so we run it on all of our desktops. (We only use Windows for gaming.)