In my spare time, I’m playing around with a Flash XML socket server written in C and running on Linux. Eventually, I’ll have it running a multiplayer online game with flash as a front end. The game rules and such will be held on the server to avoid cheating and for better synchronization.

In order to make a change I can either edit the files on my remote web server, which is kindof annoying, or I can use an editor to download the files, edit them locally, and upload any changes I make, then compile remotely. The editor I’ve been using is called Crimson Editor. It’s free, and allows you to edit remote files directly over an ftp connection.

I decided to move all of my development locally though, since my web server is across the atlantic and saving files back takes a while.

A friend of mine recommended coLinux. A way to run a linux installation on top of your windows installation with no partitioning of your drives and no hassle of dual booting. You can find more information at the site if you’re interested. So I have linux running in a window on top of flash right now. It isn’t a virtual machine, so its just as fast as if it was running on its own (I think). You should probably have some experience of linux before you try installing this, but the coLinux wiki has a decent guide to get you started.

I went for the gentoo linux installation. So far, I’m pretty impressed. I’ve had to update software before on Red Hat 7.2 and its not much fun updating every little package that the software relies on. You can update a package (like apache, php, openssl etc) with a command or two in gentoo. Well worth a look if you’re into that sort of thing.

CoLinux comes with a way to access your Windows network (and internet connection). It took some playing around with the settings to get working correctly, and I’d advise anyone to configure their linux ‘machine’ to have a static ip on your network, otherwise you get assigned a different one every time you start it up.

Ok, I’m done singing the praises of these bits of software. Sorry for the geekiness of this post, but most of my posts are geeky anyway.