Bye Virtualbox/Vagrant/Homestead, Hi Laragon

I would also like to note that setting up new projects is a breeze. When you run the program as administrator, it has access to modify the host file in windows and auto generates a friendly url for your project. (love this)

I can imagine it's painful to develop on Windows. If it's better and easier for you with that app, great :)

I'm fine here on OS X, should come over to Linux/Unix one day.

Looks like a wamp stack instead of a vm. Where the benefit of a vm is you can exactly mimic your production environment. But as stated, if it works for you awesome find!

Drop Windows and give a try to *nix/Linux/Os X :)

It's a perfect solution for Windows, since Homestead can be a pain in the ass on Windows. If you are more into Unix (Linux/Mac) then I would definitely recommend you Homestead. It's not that hard to use and you have so much options!

Laragon seems simple to use. However I like to control what I install on my PC. It's not very hard and long to install what is needed for Laravel (or any other one). I use Wamp which is very easy to configure.

When I read on Laragon site this testimony : " I was in the process of reinstalling Laravel on my Windows machine, and the update cost me nearly a days work until I figured it all out. ", I'd like to know who says that ! What are the needs ?

• Install Wamp (or another)
• Install Composer
• Install Git
• Set Path

And there is a ready solution for Laravel. Just needs 10 minutes, maybe 20 for a newbee.

once you go vagrant, there's no turning back. you will never have to setup anything on your machine directly, everything goes inside a VM, and if you mess things up, easy, remove it and try again. keep your machine clean.

I'm new to Laravel. Laragon speed me up. Help me to focus on Laravel with my limitted time. I find Laragon also better than Wampp for Windows users. The creator seems taking care all of tiny things when developing PHP in Windows. Auto start up services, creating virtual hosts and also have my toys ( Memcached, Redis). Just another game to play.

Yes it is really cool

I'm using homestead 2 on Windows with no problems other than my system (Windows + only 4GB Ram + old dual core athalon CPU) working slow with virtual machines period. But I'll probably take a look at this so thanks for sharing.

Does laragon create a vm? or is it just a package installer for the different components? My problem with trying to develop on windows without homestead is that you can't use php artisan tinker.

@nardev Sure, I love setting up a LNMP environment but not having to worry about OS upgrades etc breaking it is nice, I use Vaprobash to give me an environment to work in. Can also send it to people in my team who are less "devOps" skilled.

@jrean

Easier said then done! Some people have to use Windows. I have to at work because that is what is on the machine. Many times for security reasons you can't take work home with you anyways, but they also lock down access to the IT area etc and you are stuck working with what the employer provides.

Plus I would argue we all as developers should be able to understand the basics in each of the main three OS's: Windows Mac Ubuntu ( I argue Ubuntu Linux as many top Distros are based off of Ubuntu)

@jekinney, forcing your developers to work with Windows is just cruel. If you're exclusively working as a developer, it's usually no problem to argue with the employer that you need a Mac or Linux machine because that's where things are happening these days (and where most other developers are).

@rawfan I agree! But they pay me enough to deal with it!!!!!!

Just the way the networking and active directory is set up is the issue. We have Macs for testing but no network access on them. With the speed of development the down time to change stuff around would cost to much. Add in the fact the development part if IT was an after thought that was started to fill a niche for a couple of clients that grow and continues to grow.

Thing is, your productivity could be 80% more efficient if you had a Linux/Unix based OS to work on. People who develop on Windows normally have to because the company either focus on ASP.net or Classic ASP stuff (or .NET software).

@bashy: You could be wrong. See 200k+ XAMPP downloads last week to see how many PHP developers are using Windows.

@bashy is right. At home I use an older PC with mint as the OS. Much better efficiency wise. I love mac too, just can't justify the cost just to run the is personally.

@justmekun I was mostly referring to people in work places, not personal. I used to use XAMPP and I look back and think what the hell was I doing... :P those downloads are also from people re-downloading it when it fails!

Are there a "Linux newbies" screencasts that would help me switch from Windows to Linux? I gave Ubuntu a shot once but I guess I've given up too soon. Hated that I had to Google how to do.. well, anything. Even how to add a repo (didn't even know what the "repo" is) and then install the latest PHP version.

Also what Linux distro would you recommend to a newbie?

@toniperic I think either Debian (my fav) or Ubuntu (which is based off Debian so commands are VERY similar). I've used Ubuntu for developing/running servers before but switched to Debian for the sheer stableness of it. If you need help with Linux related problems or questions, I've probably dealt with it before. Also installed Debian on my own mini server at home multiple times. UEFI, partitions, GRUB etc.

Best way is to use the command line, it's far more powerful than any GUI.

@bashy thanks for your response. I am going to give it a try, would be good if you included some *nix tutorials and best practices on your blog. There is never enough of that stuff. :)

@toniperic No problem at all. Yeah I do want to, I was thinking of screencast about it since it's so much easier to see and do rather than read and do alone. The guy behind this website helped/helps me a lot with *nix stuff, will definitely find great posts on there http://www.cyberciti.biz

@toniperic For a beginner, my tip is to go with Ubuntu 14.04 64Bit. Don't add any repositories (aka software sources). Just install these packages in the terminal (CTRL+ALT+T)

sudo apt-get install php5-cli php5-mcrypt git gdebi

Now download the (64bit) deb packages for Virtualbox and Vagrant. Right-click the virtualbox package, go to properties and set gdebi as the default program to open it. Now double-click to install Virtualbox and Vagrant.

As a convenience you still want access to composer outside of the VM, so lets install it:

curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

From here on out, just follow the official Homestead documentation. You can install homestead through composer to get a nice homestead command. You'll also want to set up SSH keys (explained in the homestead docs).

Edit: IMO it's also a good idea to install a shell like zsh or fish, which will make working in a terminal so much nicer. For a start you can look at oh-my-zsh to get you set up quickly.

@rawfan but could I just install Virtualbox+Vagrant+Homestead on Windows, then just SSH into the Homestead and have the same thing, as if I had Ubuntu installed?

@toniperic yes you could. That's the recommended method.

Some people seem to struggle with that on occasions though. If you'd prefer not to go down the VM route, Laragon seems a good alternative for Windows users.

Personally I'd stick with Homestead on Windows. It works for me and many others.

Don't get me wrong, if there's nothing you'd miss from Windows, then certainly I'd use a Linux distro.

I do much more than coding though and find I often need the native MS Office for example because the alternatives are not fully compatible with files that I may need to work with from customers.

That and I like to play games occasionally :)

@toniperic I found that to be a pain, when I had to. Fumbling around with git-bash and such. I also found it to be convenient to work in an environment that resembles to one where you're code is eventually going to run in.

There are also just so many cmd line tools that you don't get in Windows (maybe through Cygwin). Stuff like wc for code statistics or ack (ack-grep) to search through your code. And you get those without firing up the VM.

I wouldn't call myself inexperienced when it comes to Windows, but I usually find myself spending much more time getting setting stuff up, than I do in Linux (or OSX).

In any case you should use the environment that you're most comfortable with. But it's never too late to learn something new :-)

@sitesense There's always Steam :-)

@rawfan :)

EDIT:

That and I like to play mainstream games (without Wine) occasionally.

http://store.steampowered.com/browse/linux/?l=english

@sitesense Wow this is getting offtopic. :-) But still: I'm a bit biased because I get to test lots of Linux games and ports before they get released. Haven't used wine in two years.

Couldn't live without both Windows and *nix. I have a gaming PC and a MBP. Can't go wrong then.

Also Ubuntu 14.04 is based off unstable Debian release so I wouldn't use that just yet.