Last night, I made the best decision of my computing life, ever.

Old Setup:

• Two desktop machines under my desk, two 24” LCD monitors, controlled by one keyboard and mouse via Synergy

• Main computer was Windows XP 32-bit Core2 Quad 8200 4GB RAM (2.8GB usable after OS and video card reserved)

  • Primary uses were general browsing, word processing, gaming (Starcraft 2, WoW, Diablo 3), organizing and uploading photos (Picasa + Flickr), IE-only testing, some coding

• Secondary computer was Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit Core2 Quad 6600 6GB RAM

  • Ran 4 Ubuntu VMs in VirtualBox for various development and ghetto dynamic DNS hosting during the days before I rented my current VPS from Linode
• MacBook Air that I would use when working outside of my home office or lounging in the living room

Transition to New Setup:

• Transferred the VMs onto my main computer–turns out that I really only need 2 of the 4.

  • The problem I had before was that the Core2 Quad 8200 doesn’t have Virtualization Technology enabled, so it can’t emulate 64-bit VMs even if the host machine is 64-bit, so I had to run it on the Core2 Quad 6600. Now, I only need 2 32-bit VMs that will run fine on the C2Q 8200.
• Decommissioned the Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit, pulled out 2x2GB and stuck it in the main computer for 8GB RAM total
• Install Ubuntu 12.04 LTS 64-bit on the main computer, can still dual-boot into Windows if I want to
• Connect MacBook Air with USB hub and video dongle to secondary monitor

Thoughts So Far:

It feels good. It feels REALLY good.

Since I’ve been using Ubuntu for over 6 years now, it feels really comfortable. In the past, I had run Ubuntu exclusively on several machines, including netbooks like Dell Inspiron Mini 9 and Samsung Series 5 Chromebook.

All Pros, No Cons So Far:

• Lots of good FOSS replacements for Windows-only software, like VALO-CD replacing a bunch of stuff and Frogr replacing Flickr
• I already feel a productivity increase since the terminal is right there
• Removed temptation to waste time playing games.

See original blog post from Twilio Con: https://www.twilio.com/blog/2011/09/twilio-presents-the-definitive-brogramming-primer.html

I’m newer to open-sourcing projects of my own on GitHub, so it’ll take me some time to “wrap” things properly and provide some documentation and examples so that these projects are more useful to others. I think sharing is viral, and I want to thank the open-source community for making it what it is today. I love what Jade Dominguez has done with Jekyll Bootstrap. Through him, I also learned about Derek Siver’s post on the benefits of sharing.

So, check out the codes!