Hi, Adding my $0.02... in the "distro wars".
I agree with the other seasoned Linuxers in that it doesn't really matter what distribution you use. Most all of them are good (or better) than others in some way. If you are a newbie PLEASE do not be distressed by those that advocate one distro over another. Except for things like system adminstration level stuff... they all work well (but please use a recent one, as about 6-8 years ago, it was a bit bumpy as we converted to ELF and glibc). Now, a recommendation, if you are new, consider whether or not you might want to purchase support (e.g. some one you can call in the middle of the night because your system stopped working and you have exhausted your knowledge but the system MUST be up!). If you fall into the "it must be up" then I'd encourage you to build into your budget a maintenance plan for your hardware, your OS and your MUMPS environment. If you do decide to use Linux, pick a maintenance vendor that will support whatever distribution you choose (this need not be Red Hat nor SuSE as I am sure that you can find someone willing to support most any distribution for a suitable annual/monthly fee. If DR (Disaster Recovery) is important to your site, consider whether or not you are going to do that "in-house" or with someone like SunGuard. If you go with a commercial DR house, then you need to check out the costs associated with your hardware choice and connectivity needs (to the DR site). Relative to the MUMPS vendor, it is fine to play with GT.m or Cache on a PC-class box. BUT if my business depended on the system being up, I'd talk to Bhaskar or InterSystems about a support contract for my system. When the system *has* to be "up"... you are increasing the risk of failure. One thing nice about the stack that is used by most here (Linux/GT.m/Cache) is that it all moves well to a commercial OS (e.g. AIX) nicely... but this option will cost you money, but it is legitimate and should be considered if the scale of the installation demands it. IMO, high-end x86 boxes are almost as good as the "big" boxes, and, if possible, I'll stick with Linux... but if not, there are good options that are completely compatible (if the scripts are written correctly). For example, my Linux scripts run without modification on Tru64, HP-UX, AIX and Linux... with care, yours can too. Then you don't have to worry about some of these things. As an aside, I'd like to suggest that we (as a community) work on defining a "VSB" VistA Standard Base which can be implemented, even on systems that do not have filesystems (e.g. HP OpenVMS and Microsoft Windows), or atleast follow the same pattern. Right now too many flavors of where things are installed exist, which makes .profile (or .bashrc) settings error prone. (Let's move that topic to another conversation). Cheers, --ldl On 5/25/05, Gregory Woodhouse <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I assume glibc is simply the C runtime? > > === > Gregory Woodhouse > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > "Before one gets the right answer, one must ask the right question." > -- S. Barry Cooper > > > On May 25, 2005, at 8:22 PM, Bhaskar, KS wrote: > > > Mark is right. VistA on GT.M will run on just about any > > contemporary release of just about any major Linux distribution. > > The only dependencies are glibc and libncurses. > > > > Distro wars are fun, though. Not unlike a good pillow fight where > > nobody gets hurt and everybody has a grand time! > > > > -- Bhaskar > > > -- LD Landis - N0YRQ - from the St Paul side of Minneapolis ------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net email is sponsored by: GoToMeeting - the easiest way to collaborate online with coworkers and clients while avoiding the high cost of travel and communications. There is no equipment to buy and you can meet as often as you want. Try it free.http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_idt02&alloc_id135&op=click _______________________________________________ Hardhats-members mailing list Hardhats-members@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members
