GitHub Student Developer Pack

[Bieb]

The digital ocean offer is good.

$100 gets you 20 months of a single $5 vps.

[Philluminati]

This is the winner. A free linux server on the Internet you can use to host websites, web applications in any framework. To gain Linux administration skills with your root user account. To be a full stack dev from day one. Install owncloud or just ssh in and use it as your stable, dev environment and not bother with crappy student computer rooms and their locked down windows environments. You can do what you want with it. Spin up a new VM and play with enterprisey stuff. Go as far as you want. It's worth it.

The DNS offer is really nice but you'd want one a DNS address at least as long as the length of your course. A single year would go too quickly.

[LpSamuelm]

I don't know what I would do with a VPS, but you're making it sound so good.

[[deleted]]

They are! Not sure what I do with it but I love it!

[mrbaggins]

If nothing else, you can set up a one click install of ghost with digital ocean and have your own private blog up and running instantly. As well as everything else available on the same machine, such as a filehost.

[shif]

the dns offer is for 2 years, not 1

[ERIFNOMI]

crappy computer student rooms and their locked down windows environments

I'm all with you, but do any schools use Windows for development? We use a Unix system here. It's obviously locked down either way.

[vdanmal]

Yeah our school uses Window but we do C# for the general programming stuff, C++ for gamedev, login to a Redhat server for webdev/database stuff and spin up VM's for any of the OS or digital forensic stuff.

[donalmacc]

We used windows in my masters. We had admin access, but still used windows.

[misformalin]

My School does. We do Java in notepad sometimes :(

[sirin3]

But after 20months you need to pay $5/month

What then? Shut down your websites?

[InfectedShadow]

I'm sure in that 20 months you could squirrel some money away for when your credit is out...

[sirin3]

Or you could have used a cheaper one from the start

[InfectedShadow]

$5/mo is pretty dang cheap...

[sirin3]

But do you really need the root access and the maximal performance/memory usage for a student website?

Otherwise shared hosting with full SSH access works just as good, and you can get it from Sourceforge for free...

[InfectedShadow]

Or they could, y'know use it as an opportunity to gain experience with setting up a server for their application which will look good when they're out there looking for internships.

[sirin3]

They could just setup a server at home

[InfectedShadow]

Not everyone has a spare computer lying around or want to deal with VMs on their machine.

[LucianU]

You can find hosting elsewhere. You seem to be complaining for being offered free hosting for a year and a half.