Cygwin has problems with Vista.. you need to run it as administrator.. works fine with XP though. Moreover, Cygwin is not very well supported anymore, as the developer works for Red Hat now. If it is just the X, there are other free programs.. XMing is quite good.
You can indeed install Ubuntu under a virtual machine, and sun virtual box is free for example.. but model building would be much slower. Cheers, Partha On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 4:42 PM, Jacob Keller <j-kell...@md.northwestern.edu>wrote: > I have found that cygwin works quite well for doing unix-type things on > windows--one can use whatever shell one likes, run perl scripts, etc. Have > people had problems with cygwin? I used to run CNS on it all the time. > > Jacob > > ******************************************* > Jacob Pearson Keller > Northwestern University > Medical Scientist Training Program > Dallos Laboratory > F. Searle 1-240 > 2240 Campus Drive > Evanston IL 60208 > lab: 847.491.2438 > cel: 773.608.9185 > email: j-kell...@northwestern.edu > ******************************************* > > ----- Original Message ----- From: <ha...@mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk> > To: <CCP4BB@JISCMAIL.AC.UK> > Sent: Friday, May 01, 2009 10:23 AM > Subject: Re: [ccp4bb] Computer hardware and OS "survey" > > > Hi >> >> Most of the software for macromolecular crystallography data analysis will >> run happily on Linux, OS X or Windows. However, Windows is much more >> GUI-based and much less open to shell scripting than UNIX based systems >> like Linux or OS X (DOS-Shell is very inflexible, even compared to sh or >> csh, let alone tcsh, zsh or bash). Even Python scripts are often not 100% >> portable (some of the older scripting languages like Tcl are better inthis >> respect, in my experience). >> >> Having said that, nearly half the downloads of Mosflm are for the Windows >> version - but I have no figures on how many people actually use it, having >> got hold of a copy! In my hands, it works as well as on the other >> platforms. YMMV. >> >> If your home institution really wants you to drop Macs, then I think you >> have to insist on Linux with proper support - but that costs salaries! >> >> Just my two ha'porth. >> >> My home institution, in effort to cut costs, is making an effort to push >>> those of us on Macs onto PCs. Up till now they have been very generous >>> via a lease program for computer hardware, but that is changing given the >>> current economics. The institution currently does not support Linux so >>> we >>> are limited to Mac and Windows OS. >>> >>> We certainly make use of William Scotts crystallography on OS X (thanks >>> so much!) so our main argument is that we would have far more support >>> "out there" for crystallography on the Mac than we would have for on >>> Windows. But to be fair (and hopefully bolster our argument) I should >>> find out if that is true. I did not find an equal web support page for >>> Windows. >>> >>> A volunteer survey will be distorted (probably by Mac fanboys like me) so >>> I am asking for peoples best guesstimate as to what % use of Mac, >>> Windows, or Linux is out there for data processing and model building. >>> Our core programs are coot, o, pymol, cns, and ccp4 but we certainly make >>> occasional use of other crystallography programs out there (solve, >>> epmr...) >>> >>> Also what are the relative crystallography support for Mac vs. Windows. >>> >>> Thanks in advance. >>> >>> Todd >>> >>> >>> -- >>> Todd M. Link >>> Assistant Professor >>> MD Anderson Cancer Center >>> Univ. of Texas >>> >>> (713) 834-6394 >>> >>> >>> >> -- MRC National Institute for Medical Research Division of Molecular Structure The Ridgeway, NW7 1AA, UK Email: pcha...@nimr.mrc.ac.uk Phone: + 44 208 816 2515
