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I have used both intel and AMD CPUs. The current cpu I have now is an AMD X64. I must say here that so far, I am really impressed with AMD CPUs. Before buying this one, I was really reluctant about AMD. I had read a lot of reviews about AMD before I bought this one (which is my first AMD CPU). The major problem that kept me at a significant distance from AMD was excessive heat production. Intel CPUs are much more efficient in terms of heat production, as compared to the AMD cpus. Not only was it evident in the reviews all over the internet, but I witnessed it myself when I bought my first AMD CPU. It produced much more heat as compared to a similar intel CPU. This thing concerned me because the region I live in has a harsh summer. Temperatures are at the level of 50 degrees celsius in summer, which lasts about 6 months. So buying a CPU wihich produces excessive heat and has a potential to break down in the long summer was the last option for me.But the price of the AMD CPUs is unbeatable. You can not even thing of buying a comparabel intel CPU in the same price range. But I must say that I am very happy now with my AMD cpu. It does produce a lot of heat and runs at significantly higher temperatures than intel cpu, but the main point is that it can tolerate higher temperatures better than intel CPUs. I can say this because my current AMD cpu runs fluently on 85+ degrees celsius while the previous intel CPU alwas looked like it would just die when I crossed 80 degrees. And as far as my CPU keeps working, I don't have any concern with temperature.I have not yet seen the hottest summer with my current AMD cpu and I will be able to judge it better after I use it at temperatures above 50 degrees. If it keeps running at the same level of fluency at those high temperatures, I think I would say goodbye permenantly to intel CPUs at these are much expensive.

I thought remote desktop feature of the windows can only be used through the internet. It is a nice solution for solving problems on other people's computers and if it works on a local area connection, it would be a great help for me.I am actually trying to create a system where my laptop can control the mouse and keyboard of my desktop CPU. If I can make the laptop also work as the monitor for the desktop CPU, that would also be a great thing to do. More importantly, I want a solution where configuration needs to be done only once. I mean to say that I would configure my desktop just one and then when I want to connect to the desktop through the laptop, I would only have to use the laptop, and not the desktop. As far as my knowledge of remote connections is concerned, I will need to confirm the access the the desktop every time from the own component so the desktop. I need to pass through this hurdle.

I think I will have to give up the search for video tutorials for linux, or linux administration as mentioned by "Yordan". I did a lot of search on the internet and was unable to find such a tutorial. There was just one video tutorial made by people at VTC. The title was "Introduction to Linux". But the problem with that tutorial is that it is outdated by a huge margin. It is about 6 years old, and this makes me assume that it won't be of much value to me.So instead of looking for ghosts that either don't exist or are too difficult to find, I would rather try to find some useful books and articles, which at least would have up-to-date information. The tutorials mentioned by @manuleka, "tuxfiles.org", seem to be quite useful. There are also many other good articles each targeting a specific issue.I would start to address my problem one by one starting from the major ones like installation of software and driver issues. Then, when I am comfortable with solving issues that are a potential hinderance in basic use of the operating system, I would shift to the OS and solve problems as they come forward. I think this would be a better way to do this.

I have created a local area network between two computers and both are in the same homegroup. I can transfer files from one to other, play multiplayer games and do other stuff, but sometimes there arises a need of controlling the mouse of the other computer in the homegroup and putting in keystrokes. Can this be achieved while I just use my primary computer. In simple words, can I use my primary computer to control the other computer in my homegroup.

Actually, this was the list of needs that came into my mind at the time of writing the post. There m{ay be many more, which keep coming as I do different tasks at different times. But I know that I cannot learn most thing before I actually get into the linux environemnt so you can rightfully say that it was a long list of needs. This statement of yours that many devices have drivers for linux and not for windows, is kind of strange for me as I have not seen a device like this yet. Probably this is because the area I live in is not familiar with Linux at all and almost everyone uses windows system. But if I keep living in this area, I will never have a problem of finding a driver for my windows machine because everything available at the market has a windows driver (otherwise no one would ever buy it). However, I will always have issues with my linux machines as branded products might have drivers for linux but other cheap ones might not have them. So I have to plan a solution for this thing before I make a permanent shift from windows to linux as this will be one the problems without solving which I wouldn't be able to work. And if I am unable to work in my new environment, there is no reason for me to make a shift. As I said in my first post of the topic, I hate reading books on my laptop screen and I prefer videos much more as I gain more from them. But in a circumstance where the sole source of information is a book or a webpage, I would definitedly read it. So please name a few books I can read to learn more about the driver issue on linux machine. I remember that the file I downloaded for the flash was a tar.gz archive. I don't remember if it had any .rpm file or a readme file but what I remember is that I was unable to figure out how to install it and thus I had to look for alternative ways of getting flash installed. If you can provide a link to a package which has a .rpm file or which has a readme file with the installation instructions, that would definitely help me. I know almost every tool worth using has a linux version and if I learn how to install those linux versions of the software, I would be able to continue my work on the new linux machine. But I also know that there are some tools I use that don't have a linux version and I have to find some way of using them or I will have to find alternate software. I would prefer some way of using software built for windows machine to be used on a linux machine and this would definitely take some learning. So that is also one of the item included in the LONG list of needs. That is definitely a good addition to my limited knowledge. First, I didn't knew that I can share a connection by installing a proxy server on the primary machine and second, I don't know how to install a proxy server (even a free one) on my primary machine. The first step would be to install a proxy server on my windows machine so please talk more about this as I have no idea how I can acheive this. And when I have successfully installed the proxy server on my main machine, I will have to set up my linux machine to use that proxy server, and I don't know how I would do that. So please talk about this also. You may find it funny but what is "NFS"? I don't understand it so please elaborate. Suppose I have two linux machines set up on two different computers and I want them to be part of the same workgroup (I don't know the linux terminology), would I just mimic things I would do on a windows machine or the criteria is different. How would I achieve this? Please talk more about samba server and client. I need to know more about sharing files with a windows machine because this is what I do on daily basis so I will have to deal with it alot. As you said, this is not a Linux problem at all, but for me it is a problem related to Linux because I cannot do it on Linux. I can do it on a windows machine so that doesn't concern me but because I am planning to shift to Linux, I need to know the solution to this question in a language that Linux would understand. So for me, it is a problem related to my use of Linux. I can assume that Linux to Linux connections would be even easier than windows to windows connections but in my case, I need to solve the problem of connections between different worlds. You got me wrong here, or may be I was unable to correctly explain myself. Normally, when I am trying to learn something, I would find a collection of video tutorials about that stuff all in a single DVD. For instance, when I was trying to sharpen my PHP and Mysql skills, I found a DVD created by people at Lynda.com where a collection of vidoes on the subject were present in an arranged manner. And when I say "a good video tutorial", I acutally mean "a good collection of videos in a single (or a series of) Tutorial DVD". And if I mean that, I think I don't sound foolish because more often than not, I have been able to find such DVDs in the market at a reasonable price. So if subjects like PHP, Mysql, SQL, etc are covered, I thought someone would have also created similar stuff for introduction to Linux so that beginners can use it.

First of all I need to learn some basic stuff like how to install something to the system. I know how to get software from the list provided by the application manager but I don't know how to install software that are not listed. I remember that few weeks ago, when I was trying to install adobe flash to the linux virtual machine I had setup, I had to go through a lot of pain. First I downloaded the adobe flash tar.gz package for linux but I didn't know how to use it. I extracted everything from the package, as I would normally do with archives in windows machine, but unlike the packages for windows machine, that package didn't contain an installation file (setup.exe). And I was stuck there. I did some research on the internet but wasn't able to use that package. I solved the problem of installing flash through a package update ( I don't remember exactly what update it was, but I am sure it was some update that did the trick). So the first thing I would like to know is how to install new things outside the stuff provided by the application manager.Second I would like to know how to handle network connections. For instance, how would I set up a pc-to-pc connection on a homegroup and share files (with a windows machine). I would also like to know how would I share my internet connection (that is through a usb dongle) with the computer in my homegroup connected through the ethernet port. I would also like to know how to set up wireless ad-hoc networks (with a windows machine) and share files through it.Third thing I need to know is how to handle various peripherals if they don't have drivers for linux. For instance the USB dongle I am using doesn't seem to have a driver for linux, so how would I use it to connect to the internet. SImilar goes for my graphics tablet, which also doesn't seem to have a driver for linux OS. This is something that you won't have to deal with when using a windows machine, as almost everything has a driver for windows. But for linux, there are going to be many things which don't have proper drivers. I need to know how would I deal with them.Fourth thing that is coming to my mind right now is to learn to deal with local test servers as well as test servers set up on a different physical machine. I don't have much knowledge about this topic even in the windows environemnt as wamp and xampp etc have made life very easy. But on a linux machine, without a similar package, I assume that I have use terminal to control things like this. It is one of the uses of terminal I am going to need to learn.Lastly, I must say that from whatever little experience I have with linux, I have come to know that it is quite a powerful Operating system that lets you control almost everything. I have also come to know that Terminal is its most powerful tool. So if I make a shift from a windows environemnt to a linux OS, I need to know what are the features that are more powerful in linux and what are the features that are more powerful in windows. Surely, this knowledge can only come through experience, but a theoretical knowledge of things is also very useful. From the little help I have sought online, I have realized that terminal is the tool that can be used to accomplish multiple tasks all at one place, So I need to learn more about this so that I can make a strategy about different programs I will need to successfully make a shift from windows to linux.

I am trying to get into linux and learn it to the extent so that I can make it my primary OS. But for this to happen, I must first learn how various basic and intermediate things are done on this OS. I am especially interested in learning how the terminal works and learn how to use it to perform various operations. I hate reading books and prefer video tutorial much more. Do you know any good video tutorial series on his subject from lynda, video2brain etc.

I have limited knowledge of PHP and I am trying to learn more of it. I have had an irritating problem from the time I created my first website. I create a list of links to different pages, and I add the list to all the pages included in the list. The problem is that when someone clicks on a link and is carried to the target page, the link that points to the same page is still acitve. This makes me feel that the website may look very unprofessional and I don't want to gain such reputation for my website.When the list of links was small, I added an if condition for each of the link which confirms the address of the current page and compares it with the anchor text of the link. If the condition is true, the output is only a string but when it is false, a proper link is the output.This method works fine but as the list is growing large, I have started to think that it is not an efficient way of doing this. So I am now looking for something more efficient and professional, that can achieve this for me.I have done some research on it and I have found that the trick could be achieved by javascript. Can this be achieved by using php. Which one would be easier to follow.

I don't know if I have described the title correctly, but the actual thing I want to achieve is mimic the way wordpress creates urls for new pages. I want to learn the mechanism of how these new URLs are created based on entries in the database. For instance, when you create a new page in wrodpress with title "First page", then dpending on your settings, wordpress will create a url for the page which would look something like "yourdomain.com/firstpage" As no separate file is created for that specific page, so in principal this is similar to creating pages like "yourdomain.com/index.php?page=firstpage";. The difference, according to my knowledge is that the second one doesn't involve the database while the first one (the wordpress one) does involve the databse. It reads the title of the page from the database and then depending on user settings, it creates a corresponding URL. The beauty of this type is that you don't need to create separate files for separate pages and it won't affect your SEO either. So I just need to know how to create these URLs depending on the data in the database and how to make them act like permanent urls.

I have set up a test environment to improve my php and mysql skills and learn some advanced functions to use on my website. Lately I ran into a strange problem on my local host. When I use urls like "localhost/mybooks/page.php/?page=pharmacology",the stylesheet won't work. When I remove the "?page=pharmacology" part, the stylesheet does work fine. I have no idea what is happening here as it has never happened before. I have tried to find some help related to this issue but couldn't find a single entry. The project I am working on is a test project where basically I will create a CMS with CRUD capabilities. The database I am using is Mysql and the server is Apache. On the page, I am trying to dynamically generate urls based on entries in the database. For instance, I have a table named "subjects" in my database with three entries: "pharmacology, pathology and forensics". On the index page of the website, I dynamically generated a list of links with anchors same as the entries in the "name" column of the "subjects" table. And the href attribute of the links is created dynamically to be "page.php/?page=corresponding_entry". I am unable to find the error that is causing the problem so I guess some experts on the forum will help me on this.

I have a website on Human Anatomy. It specifically covers the subject and the target audience for the website is students. Undergraduates, graduates, school kids all can get useful information on the website. I have already placed three units of adsense ads, so my website is already stuffed with ads. Recently, a friend told me that the sidebar of your website is empty and you are wasting a lot of valuable space. My idea was that adsense ads are enough and I don't want to stuff so many advertisement on the website that it looks spammy but my friend told me that I should do research on how much ads are presented on various website. From that time, whenever I visit a website, I try to look for how the ads are placed and how many of them are there. So far, I have come to conclude that most websites have a good number of advertisement on them, but what they do smartly is they promore closely related products so that instead of looking spammy, it all appears natural. So I am planning to follow a similar strategy on my website and start promoting products that would make sense to the audience. The best product I can think for my website are books, as the target audience are students. But when I did research on how much profit can be generated from books, I come to know that it is not much and if I am to do this, I should do just to help my visitors find books easily and not expect any good money from it. Considering the modest amount of traffic I recieve, I have started to think that books aren't going to do much good and I should find other ways of making use of the wasted space in the sidebar. I need to get your ideas on selling books as affiliate. Is it worth it?

My website was recently hit twice by an attack that left it with phishy links and made me miserable. It has cost me alot in terms of my search engine reputation (at least I think this way) as my website has been dropped by many positions and despite trying hard, I have been unable to reach those previous positions. For all those, who are not familiar with the power of a few position changes, I must tell that dropping by 6 positions for just one good keyword dropped the earnings of my website by about 20%. Evaluate it for a dozen other good words and you can imagine how much I have lost.So I decided to know more about how websites are attacked and how to protect againts them. I did quite a lot of research on this topic and found many good books on the subject. I am not a big fan of books as they seem boring to me. I like video tutorials more as they are more interactive and you can gain more from them with comparatively lesser concentration. I was unable to find good vidoe tutorials on the subject but I will keep looking and I hope I find some material.One important thing that came into my knowledge was that there is a special linux distribution, made specifically for this purpose. I mean for the purpose of testing vulnerabilites. It is called Backtrack and the newest version is 5. I downloaded it and deployed it on a vitual machine to see how it looks. I was really impressed by the looks of the OS but it is not what I want to do with it. I want to learn how to properly use it to find vulnerabilities so that I can protect my website from future attackes. I tried to look for some helping material but all I was able to find was a book for the version 4 of the operating system. I don't want to invest in an out-dated helping material. So I thought why not seek help at the forum I use the most, and here I am. I would really like to here on this subject from you folks. I am specifically asking about:1) Basic Use of Backtrack 52) Any helping material for this specific OS.3) Good vidoe tutorials on the subject of finding vulnerabilities and fixing them.

I agree @manuleka. Xisto is the best free host out there and no other free host can match their service without following the criteria they have made to run a successful company. I think Xisto is successful because they were able to create a stable system where money is generated indirectly. The user gets the benefit of not paying for the service (which for many, inlcuding me, is kind of a life saver), and the company gets the benefit of boasting that they are free. What Xisto has done so brilliantly is that they have successfully converted a casual thing into a money generating scheme. In other words, they have successfully generated money from the posts made by users. Everyone makes some posts on different forums to get their problems solved or get more information about stuff. But getting additional benefits from this casual thing is what makes the difference.

Be sure about one thing. If the intenet giants like Google, Wikipedia, Wordpress and Twitter, and many others keep rising against such bills, it is never going to be approved. If they don't get these giants in confidence about the bill, they should just forget about passing it.

My problem is a bit different. Though without styles, but I can access the website from the host machine. This should mean that the apache server and the mysql server all are working fine. I could have gone deep into this issue but it is not the primary one. The primary issue is that I cannot login to the administrator section of the website. And I don't have any idea why I am unable to. If this was something related to apache or mysql, the site shouldn't be available for viewing. I can view it (without styles) but I cannot log in to the admin section. And this is making me crazy.. Before attempting other things on that server, I added the Listen 80 line to the httpd.conf file. But after I made the edit, the server failed to start. It gave me some error (I don't remember exactly what that error was) but I remember that when I did some research for the matter, I found that that particular error was generated because of duplicated entries. Simply, it meant that Listen 80 was already added to some configuration file (other than httpd.conf), so I guess I don't need to play around with this issue.

So linux is nothing but a form of unix....I think it is quite an addition to my knowledge.

I tried the tutorial on the liberiangeek.net. It was very easy to follow and simple to implement and above all, it worked for me. I now have the root access for the GUI but a strange thing has happened. The username displayed in the top bar is shown as "Guest". I think there is some kind of bug but as far as it doens't have any implications, I don't think I would have any problem with it. After solving this problem, I am now even more impressed by the linux OS. It is very powerful as I have witnessed some of terminal's features but I know for sure that there is much more to follow and much more to learn before I make ubuntu my primary OS.This also goes well with our previous discussion. Instead of buying a new computer or simply making a dual boot environment, I can test many Operating systems at the same time while using my primary OS with which I am well aquainted. So if I am stuck somewhere in the new OS, I can definitely go to my main OS through which I know the way around.There is another thing that I noticed while following the tutorial. It was something related to UNIX. I thought that Unix is a different OS than Linux as is Windows or Mac. But now I think that Linux is based on Unix. What do you have to say about this?

What do you think about virtual environments. I have vmware and a virtual ubuntu installed on it. And I must say that I am really impressed with its performance. The real question would be: Is there any difference in behaviour of OS when it is installed virtually and when it is installed on an actual machine. From my little experience, I can say yes there is a difference. For instance, I was unable to get root access for my linux user (the one used during installation of the OS) and I have to use terminal every single time I need to make changes to the root. This might be because of something else but I think it is because of virtual environment. So should I test these Operating systems in virtual environment, as this would be much easier and practical. I don't think I have the option to dualboot. I have a 500 GB hard drive in my laptop and I have made three partitions on it. At present state, I have only 20GB space free. To backup this much data, I will need to invest in an external hard drive. But the problem is that here the price of a 500 gigs external hard drive is more than a respectable Pentium D CPU. A good 500 gigs external hard drive would cost me about 7000 PKR. On the other hand a Pentium D- CPU with specs like 3.0ghz processor, 1 gig ram, 80 gigs hard drive, would cost me about 6000 PKR (without monitor and other peripherals). So if I have to test different operating systems, and I need to make an investment, why won't I buy an second computer instead of just an external hard drive. However, virtual machines are much more practical for me, so please comment on this.

And if that SOPA thing gets approved, Xisto might get banned in US for this. Am I right @yordan.

My post might be a little offtopic but I am sure that this the best place for such discussion. I am not sure about the firewalls mentioned in the poll, because I have never used them. My actual reason for posting is to discuss the vulnerability of windows firewall. I have been using microsoft Operating systems since I bought my first computer. And I have never used any other firewall because I have never had any complain. One opinion about this is that In my country (Pakistan) the IT industry is not very developed and there is not enough infrastructure, which means that less people are using broadband connections to the internet. This eventually means that the scope of hacking and cracking is not very wide, so most of the time people don't have to worry about being hacked. But the opinion I want to present is that internet has made the world like a global village where anyone form any part of the world can interact with any other person like they both live in the same town. So anyone in any part of the world can be hacked.Another point is that even hackers won't waster their time on trying to hack somebody's computer who has nothing beneficial for them. So your products and security would be tested only when you become a target. And I think I have never become a target that is why I never had a compalin about microsoft.But are microsoft firewalls that bad. I mean they are a big big company. Much bigger than others mentioned in the firewall. Can't microsoft make better firewalls than these comparatively smaller companies. Yes I agree that the other smaller companies are specialists and microsoft has lots of other things to handle as well, but even then microsoft should be able to stay ahead of the competition, considering their brain power, research and user base.I personally think that microsoft firewalls are better than others but they are compromised more often because they are targeted more often. I mean its simple to understand that if you can't get pass the windows default firewall, who in the world will call you a hacker. So it might be hackers' first try to get pass windows default firewall. And when people try hard to achieve something, they often get that.NOTE: I might be wrong in my opinions and I AM NOT A HACKER OR MICROSOFT AFFILIATE.

So do you suggest that I should change my OS to one which can handle this situation. I know there are some operating systems out there that are specifically made for this purpose but my primary goal would be to not change my OS. I would really like the windows 7 to be configured to make this setting happen and work. But still if it is not possible on windows 7, I can do with virtual OS. For instance I can install a virtual OS on my laptop and present the secondary monitor with that virtual OS. I have tried to play a little bit with this type of arrangement and I think I was a bit successful as well but there were issues that I couldn't resolve. For instance, I was able to make the external USB-attached mouse work only on the virtual OS and not on the main OS, and I hope I can also make the external USB-attached keyboard work the same way. I was also able to get the nework going by making the host OS share the network with the guest OS. On the other side, the major flaw that I got was that the virtual OS would never fit to the secondary screen in fullscreen mode. I didn't have the resolution that matched the second monitor and so working on it was pretty much trouble. I tried to play with this environment a few weeks ago and now I don't remember exactly what more problems I faced but one thing I know for sure is that I was not satisfied with it. One further thing I want to mention here is that I tried the evaluation version of the windows multipoint server on a virtual environment. But I failed to get it to work. From what I read everywhere online, I know for sure that this thing does work and is specifically made for this purpose, but I am not sure whether it would work in virtual environment. From my personal experience, I think it doesn't work in virtual environment.

I did some research on the internet before coming to the forum again and found that if I type in the IP address of the guest os, I can get access the the server hosted on it. Then I did further research on how to find the IP of the guest OS (as I am completely new to linux and haven't ever used it before). Luckily I found the terminal command ifconfig. I don't know what else this command can be used for but it did the job for me. The IP of the guest OS was some 192.168.xxx.xxx (I don't remember the exact value now). When I gave the IP address in my browser on the Host OS, it did work but there I discovered a new problem. It appeared as if the PHP was not working. I can tell this because the website hosted on my Guest OS is set up on wordpress and the theme gets the stylesheet through the php. I am not sure if it is PHP or something else but I did some research online and found that PHP can cause issues in such scenarios. When I tried to log into the wp-admin, the server stopped responding. I mean to say that the server is not allowing me to log into the wordpress admin area. This is kind of strange as I have no clue for what the reason could be.I checked the network settings of the vmware and found that it bridged interface is selected by default. I think that is why I can visit the website hosted on the Guest OS. I also tried disabling the ubuntu firewall. I used some "sudo ufw disable" command if I remember it correctly but this didn't change anything. I can still visit the website but the sytles won't load and I cannot login to the admin area of the wordpress website. I also did some research on "Listen 80". According to my research, I should add this command to the httpd.conf file so that port 80 is opened. But when I did this, the apache server showed me error which was something like "IP address already in Use, cannot assigne 0.0.0.0:80" (forgive me for my weak memory). So I deleted the LIsten command from the httpd.conf file. What this problem did was that now I don't know how to make the server on guest OS allow FTP connection from host os Basically I don't even know what address, username, password to use to get FTP access even if the server allowed it. So I would like to have your help on this. @starscream, I am very glad to hear from you. I thought you left the forum (as I didn't get any replies from you). I did use wamp on my current host os, which is Windows ultimate 64 bit. I had some past experience with xampp, but I failed to find a 64 bit version of it so I installed wampserver 2.0. The installation and configuration was flawless and everything worked so well, but a few days ago, for unknown reason. the localserver started to respond extremely slow. I had to wait about a couple of minutes just to load the homepage of the website hosted on that local server. I did have the option of reinstalling the server and making all the settings but I wanted to experience the a server set up on linux (as I have heard a lot of praise). I didn't want to change my primary OS for the sole reason that I had no experience with linux and I didn't want myself to hang. So I created a virtual machine and installed ubuntu on it. From my short experience, I have become a fan of both ubuntu and vmware. Previously, I have oracle's virtualbox, but the results never satisfied me from that virtual environment. The machines created with it were always very slow and laggy. I tried xubuntu on it just to see how it looked but it never impressed me. But I have to say the vmware is way way better. I have give 2.5 gigs of ram and 2 cores of my processor to the virtual machine and it runs flawlessly. It doesn't even make me feel that it is a virtual environement and not a real one. And I liked ubuntu as well. The only big issue I am having currently is that I cannot edit, copy, cut, move files from the root through the GUI. I signed in with the username and password I gave during installation but still it won't give me root access. I tried the username root but no password matches it (not even an empty file). Consequently, I have to do every such task through the terminal and I hate doing it this way. But despite this issue, I have come to realize that Linux is a powerful OS.I don't know much about ports, (don't even know what port 80 and 443 mean) but when I tried to add LIsten to the httpd.conf file, it gave me error so I guess there is something I need to learn and understand first before making additions. My virtual machine is not slow at all. The only pain for me is that all the programs like photoshop etc which I use to create stuff for my website are on host os and since I cannot use Linux GUI to move files to root of guest os, I have to use the terminal and it gives me more trouble than anything else. One of the main reason I set up a linux virtual machine was that I wanted to test linux as well as servers operating on virtual environments. Believe me, it was very educational and I have learned alot in these fiew days. I like linux now and I think I would switch to it when I get some basic problem (a couple of which I discussed above) fixed. It is a really nice OS.The wamp server on windows was much easier to operate than operating apache, php and mysql thought the linux terminal. But I guess I have more control on my server through the terminal than provided by the wamp in windows, but I might be wrong. I was really concerned about dividing the power and memory of my cpu between two machines. But I am amazed by the efficiency of the vmware. Both machines run simultaneously without a flaw. They are seamless and I don't even notice any drop in performance. Well, the main purpose of all this set up is to learn new stuff. I don't just want to host a test site. Yes I want to improve my developer skills and test new stuff on that server, but I also want to learn how servers operate and how virtual machines run. I think this knowledge will help me understand the nature of websties and webhosts better. I am planning to go deep into this stuff step by step because this thing interests me more than my medical books.As I have mentioned above, I can access the website by putting in the IP of the guest machine, but all the features don't appear to work. The stylesheet doens't appear to have loaded and I cannot access the wp-admin area. So there is something wrong and I need to fix it.

What if I want to access the website on the host machine from an entirely different computer. I want to behave the website as if it is hosted on a separate server and accessible throughout the internet. Though it is just for testing purposes but I want it to operate this way. Is this possible then?

I have set up an environement where I have used vmware to install ubuntu on host windows 7 system. I wanted to play around with ubuntu. I have created a local server on the virtual machine (ubuntu). I have created a test website which I can access from within the virtual machine. The problem is that I don't know how to access the same website (that is hosted on virtual machine) from the host machine (windows 7).

I am trying to create a menu system where when a user clicks on a link, instead of directing to another page, a new div opens containing further information and links in it, which then direct to other pages. In more traditional types of menus, a simple hover over a link would open a list of menus but there I have two distinct issues.FIrst of all, I don't need just a list of links. I need a box (a div) that can be styled and that can have simple text in it. It could contain images, and other links. It should scroll along the page, and not as a separate entity (I don't want it to look like a spammy promotion where everything except the box darkens).Second, I need it to respond to the clikc and not to the hover. I need it to open only when a user clicks on a link. Furthermore, a small close button on the box itself, that closes it will aslo be helpful.Is there someway I can do it. Will I have to use Javascript. I don't know where to start?To elaborate things a little, I must tell that I am using a wordpress based website so if there is any plugin available for this purpose, it would make the job really easy.I have seen examples of such link systems and I definitely know that it is possible. One good example is Phonearena.com. When you go to their website, at the top of the content there is a navigation bar. When you click on the "Mobiles" or "tablets" link, instead of being carried to another page, you will see that a sort of box appears that contains further links and information in it. There are images in the box and there are links that carry the user to other pages. The box doesn't contain any close button but when you clikc anywhere outside the box, it just disappears. A very fine system indeed.An interesting thing is that when you hover over the "mobiles" link, at the bottom of your browser, the target of the link appears to be a different page but when you click on the link, instead of going to a different page, you get further information on the same page. I really liked that system and I am planning a good use of it on my website, but I don't know how to replicate it.I hope it won't be illegal..... LOL