Welcome to the light.

When you really want to switch sides, think about taking the step completely. Start using LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl).

Quite some open source programmers and developers are using PostGreSQL instead of MySQL, by the way. And sometims the P in LAMP represents PHP, but not for me...

Well, when you want to do that, download the files necessary to equip your computer. Or buy some ready-to-use things.

Linux: the best and easiest to use OS around, lots of distributions available, like RedHat and Suse (even though they might stop providing their distributions for free, but for now, go ahead). The commercial distributions come with a set of good books, but O'Reilly and many other publishers have published a lot of even better books, some of them digitally availabale.

Apache: the best web server software around, to run your websites, freely available, several good books written about it. And of course the connection between Perl and Apache, with mod_perl.

MySQL for almost all your database needs. Some people prefer PostGreSQL. I've never looked closer into PostGreSQL, my company has used MySQL for almost 10 years and we're quite happy with it.

Perl is of course the language of choice. The Monks offer a wealth of knowledge and help, like the Tutorials and my own Where and how to start larning Perl. Too many good books about Perl to read, but a good choice is the Perl CD Bookshelf from O'Reilly.

The road to knowledge is read read read, read even more, install, experiment, read more, try to build something, read, experiment, read, and than maybe ask some questions.

Update: as Nkuvu pointed out to me clearly, I was giving my opinion here instead of stating facts. My opinion is: open source is better than closed source. And within that open source, I prefer LAMP. But I like the discussion too....

In reply to Re: OT: Switching Sides by woolfy
in thread OT: Switching Sides by Khansultant

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