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By unikum on
Hello,
I develope Drupal websites on Windows localhost. However, I need to test something on Linux, because I don't have some funcionality at Windows. Production server is also Linux.
I am thinking about buying some cheap PC, but I don't know what configuration I need. Is for example pentium 800Hz and 256mb sd ram enough?
Thanks,
Peter
Comments
A pentium 800Hz shouldn't be
A pentium 800Hz shouldn't be a problem, but 256MB RAM... hardly.
Perhaps a console-only Linux without a GUI might be able to accommodate the database system and enough PHP memory for Drupal, but I wouldn't bet on it. Maybe 512MB.
And if you want Linux with a GUI, at least 1GB would be more like it.
Are they still selling
Are they still selling computers that low??
I'd like to say it would be fine, but in my experience it's really not.
If already you knew what you were doing, you could install DamnSmallLinux or maybe even Ubuntu Server on that BUT neither of those are helpful if you are just getting warmed up with Linux.
You really want a nice friendly box that actually works and has tools that help you install stuff - so Ubuntu Desktop is the choice.
Unfortunately, when I tried doing that on an underpowered machine it was painfully clunky. I had to then cut down the desktop windows manager to Kubuntu to make it usable ... and tuning my X preferences ... and that just meant I wasted a day learning stuff I really didn't want to care about.
Others may make suggestions, but if you have a production server, you should try to match its OS. and Ubuntu is Debian and is really common now, so it will give you much more useful things as a test platform than any other home-brew *nix variant. Unless your target server is redhat, Suse or whatever - in which case you should match that.
Anyway - I'd look for a server that was at least 3x more than what you describe above. Just because It'll save you headaches and lost of time pretty quickly.
Have you considered just virtualizing? You could do OK with vmware or similar
.dan. is the New Zealand Drupal Developer working on Government Web Standards
Or maybe Virtual Box
I was wondering the same thing, whether or not a virtual machine would work for you.
Just recently, I was playing around with Virtual Box on a Windows XP machine and tried the Drupal appliance from turnkeylinux.org - pretty nifty. It uses Ubuntu but is not the full desktop. You can create your own installation of Ubuntu in a virtual box but if you want to quickly test it the appliance works well.
Sorry if this is off topic as it doesn't really answer your question of the minimum requirements.
Yeah, the turnkeylinux
Yeah, the turnkeylinux virtualbox is a really good quickstart. Only contains the bits you need already installed, so it's much less of a footprint.
.dan. is the New Zealand Drupal Developer working on Government Web Standards