Ask HN: Easiest way to install a GitHub app?

2 points by nzealand 11y ago ↗ HN

Hey, I am a middle aged product manager, I want to sharpen my technical chops and play around with a few ideas as a side project.

I am finding it time consuming to get a VPS set up, to where I can clone a simple github app and get it working.

I chose a cheap VPSDime server, which has nothing pre-installed. Maybe that was my mistake.

I configured as best I could ssh, postgres, nginx, github, ruby...

Right now it is complaining that I don't have active_record installed.

I don't have a lot of spare time, and most of the dev guys I know seem to rely on someone else to setup their boxes.

Is there an easier way? Should I throw money at the problem? Are there any scripts books or videos that get you to the point of having something meaningful running?

1 comment

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mbil 11y ago ↗

If you just want to play around with github projects, I would suggest you download/install VirtualBox[1] and download the Ubuntu Server disk image[2]. You can install Ubuntu as a virtual machine (VM) in VirtualBox. Then you can SSH from your host machine into the VM, run a web server, clone github projects, or whatever you'd like. It's free and contained.

[1] https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

[2] http://www.ubuntu.com/server