Developing with Linux

For a time, Linux, which is a Unix-like operating system, was confined to the domains of the computer geeks and servers. In fact, the first Linux kernel was created by the geeky Finnish software engineer Linus Torvalds and development by the open source community around the planet kept springing up bringing hundreds of different "flavors" of Linux in the world today.

The beauty with Linux is that is totally free and one can enhance it because he can also get the source code very easily. This has, to some degree, threatened the leading commercial operating system in the market today – Windows.

In a survey of more than four hundred IT managers, programmers and developers, it was found out that Windows developers have declined in number by 12 percent from last year. This has caused Windows' 74 percent developers decrease to a bout 62 percent this year.

True, Windows is still in dominance but Linux popularity has consistently been eating up an increasing portion.

Many devices other than the tradition desktop and laptop computers like hand held personal digital assistants and cellular phones are switching to Linux to run their devices. Because Linux is free, this will significantly reduce the selling price of the devices and make them more accessible to the masses. Because Linux is open source, the operating system's source code can be modified to run efficiently on smaller electronic devices.

Linux development tools have also come a long way to sophistication. Techies know that in the distant computer world past, which is a few years ago, talking of development editors mean using vi or EMACS command line editors with interfaces similar to Windows command prompt of Notepad. But today's Linux development environments can rival those of Windows' graphical look and feel like its Visual Studio Suite.

In the home, more and more household users are switching to Linux to fit their budgets. This has become easier for them to use Linux because of the many desktop features that make computing similar to what they have been used to with Windows in the past.

Many applications have developed for Linux. Well, it is no surprise because of the thousands of collaborating programmers around the world lending hands and brains for Linux. It's answer to Microsoft's Office is OpenOffice. For internet applications, there Firefox, Thunderbird, Pidgin, aMule, Evolution and Azureus. For multimedia, the choices include MPlayer, Amarok, Totem, VLC, Xine, and XMMS. For graphics editing, one can have Blender, Inkscape, Scribus and Blender. These are all free software so who would not be enticed?



I think one of the big reasons why many developers are going to Linux because of the bright career prospects in the future. With the exponential rise in manufacturing of electronic devices, it will certainly mean big demands for Linux developers a few years from now. But among my IT friends and colleagues, the thought of being a Linux guy is synonymous to the word "cool". Call it hype, but I believe it to be so.

Linux, Apache MySQL PHP installer - XAMPP

I am a web developer. And to be specific, I have been using php and mysql for quite some time after I moved from Microsoft's Active Server Pages (ASP) simply because php and mysql are free and of course very stable.

But just recently, I had been part of a project that is not web based but this project uses php and mysql which are web based applications.

As any web developer knows, these trio – Apache, MySQL and Php require separate installations on the server machine. Now having been working for internet applications, I usually did not have to install these softwares because they are already in place in some remote place. All I would do would be to tweak the configurations to my specifications, upload the pages I made and then the project is done. Of course, I have to have the three softwares on my computer to test the pages before upload. What I'm saying is that is that I didn’t have to install all three every time there would be a new project.

Now, in this new project, every time there is a need to install the whole application, and many clients have already expressed interest in acquiring, one would have to separately install Apache, MySql and Php. And that is not to mention manually configure each of them. This is not only a tiring and cumbersome process but it can also be confusing to our technical support who go to the field. And since our organization is small and non-profit, we don’t have many IT staff. Our new staff can experience the steep learning curve for these three technologies- let alone the learning curve to the functions of the application itself.

We finally found our solution – XAMPP. The name is really an acronym for X (any of the four popular operating systems – Linux, Mac OS X, Windows and Solaris), Apache, MySQL, Php and Perl.

XAMPP bundles together the aforementioned technologies into one installer so that the user can easily install in one click. Our senior IT specialist customized the flash screens to include our software logo and also configured the settings for Apache, MySQL and Php. The past experience of individually installing the components and doing the process in almost an hour has been reduced to five minutes and very few clicks.

Next to being its easy to use and efficiency, the best thing about XAMPP is that it is totally free of charge and also free to copy under the GNU General Public License terms. Many non profit organizations have really benefited from free software.

Right now, our application runs on both Windows and Linux. The latest version for both Linux and Windows is XAMPP 1.6.2 which contains Apache HTTPD 2.2.4, MySQL 5.0.41 and PHP 5.2.2 among other useful applications like ProFTPD 1.3.0a, phpMyAdmin 2.10.1, Webalizer 2.01 and PEAR.

The official website of XAMPP can be found at http://www.apachefriends.org and there are abundant resource which can be found.