Easiest way to use new tools in old Linux environment

[h1bored]

At the day job I need to use the standard Linux install that is on all our machines. Upside: its standard and supported by IT. Downside: it uses pretty old tools. "old" relatively speaking of course!

Compiling new versions of tools would be really tedious because of the web of dependencies that would drag in and reinstalling is not an option.

Can anyone suggest an easy way to use the tools of a more modern Linux distribution like fedora 10/11 or ubuntu 9.04 overlaid on a 2 year old centos environment? Is running a virtualized copy of a modern distribution the only way forward? That would still be a hassle because of having to try to 1) get it working in the environment (who knows if vmware or virtualbox will even run on the standard setup here) and 2) duct tape the various filesystems etc together.

[mbrubeck]

Setting up a chroot is often easier than virtualization, when the host and "virtual" systems are different distributions of the same OS.

On Debian-like systems (including Ubuntu) you can use debootstrap to set up the chroot, e.g.: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebootstrapChroot

[olefoo]

It's a bit ghetto, but you could mount your home directory on the workstation via ssh from your laptop and then use it from your laptop when you need to use mercurial or whatever nifty toy.

Ubuntu puts this functionality under the 'Places' menu item.

//assuming you are even permitted to do that

[h1bored]

I wish :-(

My laptop is the IT standard bastardized version of XP so I can run outlook. Though perhaps it'd be easier to crack it open, up the RAM, and run ubuntu in a VM on it..

[bakkerBart]

Try Gentoo/Alt. I used it to get up-to-date GNU stuff in a Solaris environment. You don't even need root access. Highly recommended, it's very flexible. Gentoo being Gentoo, you need some skills, though.

[bakkerBart]

url: http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/gentoo-alt/prefix/