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General Discussion

Posted by Johnathan Rowley
Johnathan Rowley
3,842 Points

looking to upgrade

hi i'm in the process of starting android development and web developer tracks but i need to get more memory but yet i own a old macbook that i can not upgrade further so and i have no money to buy a new one and consider switching to linux but i want know if i should or buy (i hate say it a windows 8 laptop) or even see if i could put a larger hard drive in the macbook even though i can not get mountain loin on it plus its getting slower now that downloaded ruby on rails pack .if any one has any advice on this please respond

2 Answers

Oliver Gibbs
Oliver Gibbs
9,771 Points
Oliver Gibbs
Oliver Gibbs
9,771 Points

Depending which Treehouse tracks you want to follow you may be better to stay with your Mac if at all possible. For example iOS development must be done within a Mac OS environment so a Windows 8 PC would be a problem (although you could possibly look into virtualization software). I think Ruby and anything that involves using a console would be easier on a Mac or Linux, as the Windows Command Prompt is a very different thing to the Mac Terminal interface that the instructors use in the videos. That said I use Windows 8 due to personal preference and found it great for Android development, prices are really low on Windows PC's at the moment - even the cheapest Windows laptop is probably fine. I just spent ~$400 on a brand new Windows 8 laptop and it runs Eclipse, VirtualBox, Sublime Text 2, etc just fine. You'd definitely find even cheaper prices on a used Windows 7 computer.

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

Ruby works great with VirtualBox on Windows so there's that

Johnathan Rowley
Johnathan Rowley
3,842 Points
Johnathan Rowley
Johnathan Rowley
3,842 Points

so which is better to get windows7 or 8 and what do i need to get started as android- php- ruby on rails developer

Oliver Gibbs
Oliver Gibbs
9,771 Points

I think either Windows 7 or 8 would be fine, whatever gets you the best deal. As James says above you could look into installing a Linux operating system to run Ruby. If you download a program called VirtualBox onto your Windows PC you can install another operating system within that software, personally I like Ubuntu as it's easy to install and seems to be frequently updated. http://www.ubuntu.com/

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

It's even easier to get Ubuntu on a VM if you use a Virtual App like turnkey Linux