[Beowulf] Redmond is at it, again

[Roger L. Smith]

On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, Martin WHEELER wrote:

>
> > Clusters/Linux
> > is only a portion of my job, and I'm not enthusiastic about spending a lot
> > of time right now learning the ins and outs of a new distro.
>
> Understandable.  (Although, from personal experience, perhaps not as
> onerous as you might imagine.  Over here, like it or not, we *have* to
> be polyvalent.  Goes with the terrain.)

Oh, I'm polysyllabic too, just not in Linux.

> > I have several very complicated and "you wouldn't believe me if I told
> > you" expensive software packages that is critical to portions of our
> > research.  Breaking this software is not an option.
>
> Absolutely!
> And all the more reason (for me, at least) to make damn' sure it
> runs on more than one distro!  But then maybe that's just my personal
> paranoia showing.

I don't have a choice in the software that we run.  If they would let me
pick, things would be different, but I have to play with the hand that I'm
dealt.

> > If I change to some
> > obscure distro
>
> Err ... what qualifies as 'obscure' here?
> (In Europe, Debian, Mandrake, RedHat and SUSE are regarded as being much
> of a muchness, both in takeup and performance.)

I've been using the word obscure rather than naming specific distros.
But, I'm confident that at least one of those you list isn't "blessed" by
some of our commercial applications.

> > Software vendors can't be expected to bless every kernel dot rev and every
> > fly-by-night distro that may pop up.
>
> Err... I wouldn't categorise any of Debian, Mandrake or SUSE as
> 'fly-by-night'.  Or obscure.

Great! Then if you'll start developing computational simulation software,
maybe I'll start purchasing from you.  Otherwise, I'll have to stick with
what is supported for the software that I have now.



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| Roger L. Smith                        Phone: 662-325-3625               |
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