Virtual Appliances Offer Fast Sandboxes, Production Environments

[ Thanks to jnaze for this link. ]

"One of the most obvious benefits of free and open source software is the ability to download world-class software and implement it gratis on your system. But, sometimes, there is a big difference between theory and action. I'm not talking about installing desktop applications like

"Firefox, OpenOffice.org, or GIMP. Most of the Linux distributions have by now made this process newbie-simple, and Windows and Mac systems have never had a problem with installation. Rather, I am talking about complex server systems, like Ruby on Rails, Tomcat, Joomla!, or Drupal. Regardless of platform, getting one of these instances running can range from a bit tricky to downright hair-pulling.

"Naturally, if you're using a good Web hosting service, it's not too hard to sign up for, say, a Drupal- or Joomla!-based site and, with a little configuration, have your site up and running in a few hours. But, what if you need an instance in order to play around or, more seriously, learn about the guts of such a system without (a) messing up your machine's base settings and (b) paying for hosting fees."

Complete Story

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