> I recently set up IDL (commercial s/w like > Mathimatica) to run inside a Linux zone to work > around a lack of Solaris x86 platform support. So > this is another possibility for commercial software > like that.
You should ask if they will port to Solaris x86. They will not port unless they feel there is a market, and they wont feel there is a market unless people ask. > The biggest issue that I've seen so far between > building and running science applications on sparc > and x86, aside from infrequent endian issues, is that > often 64 bit support is very solid for sparc, but > either doesn't exist, or is unstable, for x86. This > is true of open source programs as well as closed > source ones, and is a symptomatic result of Sun being > ahead of the curve on 64 bit computing compared to > other OS vendors. As far as I know, Mathematica supports 64-bit on all 64-bit platforms. But they don't support Intel chips on Solaris x86 - only AMD chips. Personally the biggest issue I find is GNU'isms, where people make write code that only the bash shell knows, or code that only gcc can compile. MATLAB has no support for Solaris x86, but with various rumours of them doing so. I got a reply from their tech support saying there were no plans, but others have heard different responses. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
