eRacks Systems Tech Blog

Open Source Experts Since 1999

We at eRacks are designing a new model geared specifically toward the developer, and want to hear from you, the customer, about what you would like to see in the system (please leave detailed comments for this blog post!)

We’ve been batting around a few ideas, both software and hardware related, and would like to share them here for your consideration.

1. IDE, Revision Control System and your Operating System of Choice

Our development model would (of course!) come pre-installed with the best in open source development-related software. Do you have a favorite IDE, or do you prefer to simply invoke your text editor, compiler and makefiles directly? Would you like us to install a revision control system such as CVS, Subversion, Mercurial or Git? What’s your operating system of choice? Are you a fan of Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, OpenSolaris, etc.?

2. What Kind of Developer are you?

While there are usually at least some applications common to most developers, a great deal of the software you’d like to be installed will probably depend significantly on the kind of development you do. Are you a kernel developer? If so, we’ll install the kernel source and headers for you. Are you an applications developer? If so, are there any open source libraries you’d like us to pre-install for you? What about you web developers out there? We could, at your option, install a local web and database server for testing purposes, as well as your scripting engine of choice (PHP, Ruby, Python, Perl, etc.) Do you not fit exactly into any of these categories? Have we missed something? Let us know!

3. Hardware

Do you prefer to develop on a laptop, or do you like to do your programming on a desktop machine? What would you think about having the option of two or more monitors to help you spread out your work, configured to your unique specifications (would you like 2 or more individual displays, or 2 or more monitors tied together into a single virtual display?)

Anything we haven’t mentioned that you’d love to see in a development-specific model? Again, just let us know! Be sure to leave us a comment sharing your thoughts.

September 18th, 2008

Posted In: Development, New products

Tags: , , ,

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