I’ve been reluctantly using windows as a development environment for the past couple of years. Prior to that, being that I was working primarily in java enterprise, I split my time between red hat linux and windows. I much prefer a *nix variant to windows as a development environment and have always pined for a return. Well it seems like I no longer have any excuse not to with the explosion of workable virtualization software.

I know of several developers who’ve are successfully doing windows development in OSX. The key is a commercial product named Parallels which allows you to create virtualized OS’s. So instead of having to dual boot, you can run an entire OS within a window in OSX. So now you can use OSX for everything except your windows development work, which you simply fire up you virtualized windows OS for.

A major feature in this setup is the protection this offers you from viruses etc. All a windows virus can harm now is your virtualized instance, in which case you should be able to easily return to a previous instance in time. As well, as you’re using windows in a far simpler fashion, only development tasks, it will tend to be a cleaner instance of windows which we all know is a good thing when it comes to windows.

So am I getting a mac? Well I’d love to, however, I can’t get over the price shock. As well, while I’d love to get at that slick gui and some of those applications, I’m not sure I’m willing to do that at the expense of having access to a pure shell environment. Using a shell in OSX means running it on top of a bulky windows manager. As well, I’d rather have hardware options instead of being a slave to whatever Apple chooses to offer me.

In the end, I would much rather give a BSD variant a try. With a BSD variant, I have control over the kernel if I need that, can run whatever windows manager I like when I need it, and can run a shell without a windows manager.

So, here’s my current plan. I’m going to try a bsd variant, pcbsd or desktopbsd. At this point my plan is to give pcbsd a try along with the virtualization product win4bsd to run windows. I’m contemplating building a new desktop to test this on. Building my own allows me to get exactly what I need, two drives in a RAID array etc at a reasonable cost.

If things work out then I’ll run primarily on the desktop and move my existing laptop to pcbsd using it primarily for browsing, email, etc.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 12th, 2007 at 4:46 pm and is filed under Geek. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.