TwoBrownShoes

One of my students this week started a month on Linux. He's excited by the prospect of having a portable operating system - with persistence... and is embarking upon the challenge of installing Ubuntu / Fedora on a USB stick.

At school I'm constantly trying to help students make intelligent decisions about open source... to recognize the right tool for the job. Sometimes, even the MS product is the best choice (open source alternative to Captivate, anyone?)... :(

As part of the processing of migrating our moodle sites to their new home, I investigated setting up apc - the "alternative php cache" managed as a pecl project.

Installing apc on Ubuntu couldn't be easier... this is basically a post I contributed to Moodle.org ... thought it'd be useful here too.

Assuming you have php5 and apache2 all up and happy on your Ubuntu server ;)... this should get you over the line with apc:

1. Install pear (and the various libraries for pecl to install)

The time has come to finally transition off our crazy Windows box at work. For the past couple of years the site had gradually been grinding to a halt... and it certainly wasn't the hardware.

To be honest, the build process had been a shocker. My predecessors had basically "imaged" a previous Windows server onto a new box... and the performance was terrible from the start.

The first stage of my plan calls for a transition to Ubuntu Dapper Server (64bit)... although I don't have a spare server and can't afford more than about an hour's downtime... the answer? Host the site for a short period on a desktop box... and pray hard!