Michael Hannon wrote:
Hi, folks. I'm getting some inquiries about Ubuntu these days. The
following, from one of our postdocs, is fairly typical:
> I'm not usually one to proselytize, but the availability of scientific
> applications on "Scientific Linux" is just embarrassing compared to
> Debian/Ubuntu. Just some of the scientific apps I can apt-get that
> aren't available on SL: axiom, singular, root, grace.
I am personally happy and comfortable with SL, but I *can* see an
advantage to having Avogadro's number of packages available for quick
and easy installation.
I'd like to know how others are dealing with this. Is anybody using
Ubuntu clients with SL servers for instance? Any other words of wisdom
on this topic?
There should be no worries at all using U clients and SL servers. I
regularly mix Linux distros (at school we have Debian on the servers,
CentOS4 on my desktop). At home, I went from RHL to Debian to WBEL on my
server, assorted RHL, RHEL-clones, Debian, Ubuntu on clients.
Do look at the vendor support life; most U releases have short lives.
Do look at what's supported. Universe is not, and odds are good that all
your scientific packages are in Universe.
Do look at Java support. I don't know the current state, it could be
good, it could be bad.
Do consider Debian. It's not as polished, but it has a longer support
life than Ubuntu.
Also look at Mepis. It was based off Debian, but switched to U.
Oh, do look at what kinds of problems get fixed. selinux wasin
Debian/woody but didn't actually work, and the selinux developers were
not allowed to fix it "in case something else breaks." Security problems
get fixed, but precious little else.
--
Cheers
John
-- spambait
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