Let's switch to a new environment.

OK guys. I thinks I published plenty of posts in a tiny area of network configuration and I feel it's time to switch to some new platform. It's not going to be a new world but programming in a well known platform and language.

No more suspense...I'm going to do a little bit of programming in C++ working in Linux environment. Yes, you heard me right. It's not the well known Visual Studio IDE that I'm going to use to play with C++ this time.

You can join these posts with a number of available options. 

1. you can have a PC completely running in Linux platform ( Fedora, Redhat, Ubuntu, KNOPPIX etc.) but you need to have g++ compiler in it.
2. you can partition your hard disk to select the linux OS while booting your PC without straight away login into Windows
3. you can install a virtual machine software in your Windows platform and install Linux within it.
4. Have a bootable linux OS CD and restart your PC, booting from the CD it self (but the problem here is, even you work hard for the whole day creating hundreds of files at the end of the day, they will be no longer available after switching off the PC or removing the CD. So, all you have to do is, have a pendirve connected to the virtual machine and copy your work then and their to it so that you can use them later)

Any option is possible but I think most of you will surely like the third option because I know most of you are so familiar with windows operating system ( windows 7 at the moment) and afraid to change you OS to a completely different world :)

It's my option too. I have Windows 7 -ultimate running in my PC at the moment. but I also need to tell you something you should know. 

your PC needs at least a dual core processor and RAM of GB to make the machine ready to run a virtual machine. I know you guys know what a virtual machine is. A virtual machine (VM) is a software implementation of a machine (i.e. a computer) that executes programs like a physical machine. Let's say you are going to run another OS on top of your machine's currently working OS. Furthermore,  I am going to run Linux on top of Windows. This task cannot be achieved if we don't have a virtual machine software installed in your PC.

Tips for you :- 

There are plenty of virtual machine software available online to download free e.g :-VIRTUALPC_2004, VirtualBox, VMware Workstation etc. But you have to select one out of them that is compatible with your OS.

I use VMware Workstation 7.1.4 which you can download from here,

Download VMware Workstation 7.1.4 for W...

this is compatible with windows XP and higher as far as I tried. I don't think you will have troubles in installing the VMware but you may have troubles in creating a new virtual machine. In my case it's going to be fedora-14.

OK, then I'll explain you in the next post on how to install a new virtual machine in VMware workstation and continue making C++ programs using it. Don't miss the next post because you will really enjoy working in this platform with commands.