By drupaldumbo on
I work as a contractor for the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and we may be developing a new public Web site in the next year. Our CIO (Chief Information Officer) thinks Drupal is really great and he would like to use it to develop this new site.
We are in the process of getting new computers, way overdue. Remember, this is AF/government and the choices are very limited. It will be HP laptops and either XP or Vista operating system and 32 or 64 bit.
I have spent several hours touring the internet to see if I could get some good answers to the questions which to choose, but I have found nothing definitive. Can anyone help with some guidance?
XP or Vista and 32 or 64 bit?
I'm guessing it will be Drupal 6.
Thanks,
Comments
For production???
Windows is bad for hosting a server anyway. No difference what Win you choose. I would choose XP 32-bit. most speed, most compatibility.
- Alexei Rayu.
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Server or clients?
It sounds like you're talking about which OS to use for the users rather than which to use for the server. Correct?
If so, then the answer is: It doesn't matter. Anything with a modern browser will work, and it doesn't need to be Windows at all. Drupal is a web app - you install it on a web server, and everyone uses it via their browsers. No part of Drupal gets installed on the client computers. The only recommendation I would suggest is try not to use IE if you can avoid it - especially IE 6.0 (the built in browser on XP).
As for the server, most Drupal Pros prefer Linux but it can be hosted on Windows too. Although on Windows it's generally easier with Apache rather than IIS as more of the docs are applicable.
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Anton
What Is Best OS for Developers
Michael Blake (Ctr)
Air Force Office of Scientific Research
I guess I'm asking which is the best Windows OS to be used on the developer computers. Wouldn't there be some portion of the Drupal software that would reside on the development computer?
Unfortunately, this is the government and we don't always get a lot of choices. Our internal browser is IE 7 and only IE 7. I'm not even allowed to load Firefox on my computer. As a public site the new site will have all sorts of users using different browsers. A lot of our constituancy is in education.
Generally, our servers are IIS, but I don't know what flexibility we would have about the system used on a new public server.
The real question is what Win operating system is best for a Drupal development computer?
Thanks for your time,
Michael
Still XP pro i would say.
Still XP pro i would say. And I would use a prepackaged wamp stack if at all possible (i like www.wampserver.com, but there are others). The individual configuration of the different pieces of the required technology can be a nightmare if you're new to it all. I also recommend using apache if at all possible-- that's what the majority of users have experience with and what the majority of documentation assumes. It's doable with IIS, but there will be less of a pool of experienced people to help you when you run into problems.
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"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." - Lao Tzu
"God helps those who help themselves." - Ben Franklin
"Search is your best friend." - Worldfallz
I guess I'm asking which is
You only need to install anything on the developer workstations for Drupal if they need a local version running. You wouldn't need to do that if they all have their own development instance(s) running on a shared development server.
If you do want instances running on their own machines, then they need everything you'd install on a proper server (eg PHP, a web server, a DB server etc).
In terms of development tools, the bare minimum is a browser and a good text editor (ie not notepad or wordpad). I would recommend a version control tool (eg subversion and tortoisesvn).
In terms of browsers, if you are stuck with IE 7 you'll miss out on the best web development tools like Firebug etc.
Of all the software the developers will use though - the OS is probably the least relevant to Drupal. Just use what suits your hardware and environment the best.
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Anton
For the Drupal developer I
For the Drupal developer I would let him or her pick what they are most comfortable with and install XAMPP. http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html Drupal has a install guide for XAMPP
http://browsershots.org is a easy way to see how your site looks in different browsers.
Discount SSL Certificates http://www.RunSSL.com
I Appreciate All the Responses.
Michael Blake (Ctr)
Air Force Office of Scientific Research
I appreciate all the responses. I don't necessarilly understand everything that's being communicated here and when my Drupal time comes I probably will need to, but for the time being I think I'm safe using Vista 64 on our new computers.
We use Photoshop and Flash and things like that and it would be very nice to have the extra memory Vista 64 would allow us.
Thanks to everyone for all your help. I'll be back.
Michael