

Ask HN: Easiest way to install a GitHub app? - nzealand

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.<p>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.<p>I chose a cheap VPSDime server, which has nothing pre-installed. Maybe that was my mistake.<p>I configured as best I could ssh, postgres, nginx, github, ruby...<p>Right now it is complaining that I don&#x27;t have active_record installed.<p>I don&#x27;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.<p>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?
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mbil
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](https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads)

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

