This post hold information about a VMware image that I created for a report that I am working on in my Technical Communications course at Capella University. The report is on Java training for beginners. This image contains software that is pre-installed on a student’s classroom PC. For those who don’t have access to the physical classroom, this image can be used to follow along with the course.

System Requirements
– 2 gigs of RAM
– 10 gigs of hard drive space

Windows or Linux – the VMware Player. Free.
Mac OSx – VMware Fusion. Free 30day trial.

The software list follows:
This starts with a LAMP setup. LAMP is an acronym for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. This combination of software is a common configuration for running PHP web applications. This has little to do with running Java, but does allow phpmyadmmin to be run. This is a web based MySQL database administration application. It’s easy to use and popular for administering a database from a remote site.

Ubuntu 8.10 – updated July 18th with all patches and fixes.

Apache 2.0 – web server

MySQL – version 5.0 – Version 5.0.67-0ubuntu

PHP version 5 – a web application programming language.

phpmyadmin – A PHP based web application for administrating MySQL

Eclipse Europa. – This is the base version of eclipse with few plugins.

JBoss Developer Studio Community Edition – If you like this version the release is available for a mere $99 from here.

jre 1.6.0 update 14
Installed to /usr/java/jre1.6.0_14

Java EE 5 SDK with jdk 1.6.0 update 14
Installed to /usr/java/SDK

Subversion version 1.5 – a source code control system.

subclipse version 1.4 – integration of subversion into eclipse.

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To gain access to the VMware image, send me an email and ask me for the username and password.
Download the VMware Appliance here: Download
File size: 2,271,743,211
The md5sum sum: eb36f88c6bcdd06c8b46d204c580cf3e

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Once the file has downloaded, extract the files contained in the Ubuntu.tar.gz archive. To do this, on windows use winzip. On Linux and MAC use tar like this: tar -xvf Ubuntu.tar.gz

Inside the archive are two files.

1. Ubuntu-disk1.vmdk
2. Ubuntu.vmx

Next run the VMware player. Once the program loads, click “Open Existing Virtual Machine”, and browse to the directory where you extracted the files from the archive. Select UBuntu.vmx and click Open.

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One of the people I worked with a National City Bank (now a part of PNC) turned me on to Ubuntu. Thanks Kirk!

While I wasn’t a big fan right from the start, I’m a big fan now. The first version I saw was Version 6.10 (Released October 2006). I was very much into CentOS at the time and so there was some resistance to the adoption of another OS when I was happy with what I had. Even today, I still use CentOS for firewall machines and machines that are used for DHCP, DNS caches, and the like. Ubuntu has become an operating system that I use for desktop systems.

I’m not an operating system zealot. I don’t have a problem with people using Windows. I still run windows too. It really makes sense for companies, who have a diverse work force with many different levels of user expertise. Companies have adopted Windows and they have invested in it. It’s typically behind the corporate firewall and everyone is used to it. For people with broader computing horizons, I encourage you to try kicking the tires on Linux.

I’ve setup desktops, laptops, and servers with Ubuntu. I find the documentation and software support forums to be an outstanding reason that the platform has succeeded.

Here are some of my favorite Linux Resources:

• http://www.ubuntulinux.org/
• http://www.linuxquestions.org/
• http://www.ubuntu-unleashed.com/

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Ubuntu Announcements:

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Have you ever heard of the World Community Grid? No? Well check it out. This is a non-profit organization, whose mission is to create the largest public computing grid benefiting humanity. This grid computer has processing power that rivals the largest super computer. This allows scientists to solve problems that will aide humanity.

The best part is, that anyone can help. You simply, install a screen saver and donate your idle computer time.

Here is a short list of projects that are active as of this writing.

• The Clean Energy Project
• Nutritious Rice for the World
• Help Conquer Cancer
• Discovering Dengue Drugs – Together
• Human Proteome Folding – Phase 2 Project
• FightAIDS@Home Project

I am a proud donator of computing power to the World Community Grid. Here are a few of my stats.

Help Conquer Cancer

Do you know someone who has been effected by cancer? I recently lost my father-in-law to lung cancer. If you have been effected directly or indirectly by cancer, then Join The Grid Now!

Please join the grid and change the world. If you start donating computing power as a result of this article, then please join my team. NCC-1701

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