Finally Developing on Ubuntu

It has been a long day coming but it is here!!

After convincing my boss not to spend upwards of $4000 on a MacBook Pro and instead hand over $2000 of his credit card (wasn’t a hard sell), I have now built my second PC.

Its running Ubuntu 64 9.04, q8200 2.33Ghz, 6GB ram, 640GB hd.  Very nice setup, nice case, good air flow, silent fans, very low heat (thanks to a Thermalright TURE).

Why 6gb on a dev machine?  Well I’m in the business of building social websites.  Social websites require testing with multiple users.  I tried using multiple instances of Firefox on Mac OS X without much success.  With the aid of VirtualBox I can now run 4 separate Firefox instances plus my native one, giving me a whole bunch of testing opportunities.

Also with Ubuntu and Compiz I am running a total of 8 desktops.  4 different layers with two sides to each, did I mention the 22″ monitor, oh and the 20″ that sits next to it.

I have finally setup all the software and dev libraries required of a Rails Dev and efficiency is up, WAY UP!

Bring on the social website!

Posted on May 25, 2009 at 11:05 pm by Jordan Carter · Permalink
In: Ubuntu Tricks, Web Development · Tagged with: 

2 Responses

  1. Written by Michael Deering
    on May 26, 2009 at 10:10 am
    Permalink

    I’m looking at doing the same. I have had my MacBook Pro for over 2 1/2 years now, the last year of which has really been a struggle. I run a lot of virtual machines and it just cannot keep up. I’m looking at switching to a desktop setup and the price gap between a Mac Pro and a linux desktop is absolutely staggering.

  2. Written by Jordan
    on May 26, 2009 at 8:17 pm
    Permalink

    Do it Michael. Do you run rails? I find anything involved with Dev is much simpler to install on Ubuntu.

    I now have my desktop setup with each desktop appropriate for the current projects which makes switching only seconds. (Good for quick bug fixes on projects not currently under dev).

    Tho, today I found a flaw to my desktop setup. Firefox (about 4 windows, each with about maybe 10 tabs) is chewing up my 6gb ram, Firefox had 1.3Gb to itself when I left the office today.

    Fix The memory leak!

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