[Quantian-general] Quantian Futures (was Re: R & Octave) (fwd)

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

Robert W. Hayden wrote:
> I tried Scientific Linux 5 and CentOS 4.  Both are serious
> distributions for work rather than play BUT I found very little
> scientific software readily available.  I have since erased SL5 and
> may do the same with C4.

Scientific Linux 5 and CentOS 5 are both near-clones of RHEL 5. And the 
same is true of SL4, CentOS 4 and RHEL 4. If you know where to get 
*compatible* RPMs, everything should work the same way on any of them. 
That said, I couldn't get SL5  to work on my Athlon64 X2, but CentOS 5 
installed without a hitch. Go (con)figure. :)

But if you want to go the RPM route for a scientific workstation, you 
are probably better off with Fedora than one of the RHEL clones. RHEL 
and its clones are designed to be stable secure servers, and they tend 
to have older versions of the common desktop packages and the scientific 
software than the RHEL clones in any given time frame.

> Many students have MUCH more recent hardware
> than I do but many also have comparable junk and I see requiring a
> bootable DVD drive as a liability, especially in poorer countries.

Speaking of poorer countries, I participated in the One Laptop Per Child 
Give One Get One program and have one of the XO laptops. It's Fedora 7 
based, so it will run just about anything that can be done in 256 MB of 
RAM on a 433 MHz AMD Geode. I have R and wxMaxima running on it.