I have found that cygwin works quite well for doing unix-type things on
windows--one can use whatever shell one likes, run perl scripts, etc. Have
people had problems with cygwin? I used to run CNS on it all the time.
Jacob
*******************************************
Jacob Pearson Keller
Northwestern University
Medical Scientist Training Program
Dallos Laboratory
F. Searle 1-240
2240 Campus Drive
Evanston IL 60208
lab: 847.491.2438
cel: 773.608.9185
email: j-kell...@northwestern.edu
*******************************************
----- Original Message -----
From: <ha...@mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk>
To: <CCP4BB@JISCMAIL.AC.UK>
Sent: Friday, May 01, 2009 10:23 AM
Subject: Re: [ccp4bb] Computer hardware and OS "survey"
Hi
Most of the software for macromolecular crystallography data analysis will
run happily on Linux, OS X or Windows. However, Windows is much more
GUI-based and much less open to shell scripting than UNIX based systems
like Linux or OS X (DOS-Shell is very inflexible, even compared to sh or
csh, let alone tcsh, zsh or bash). Even Python scripts are often not 100%
portable (some of the older scripting languages like Tcl are better inthis
respect, in my experience).
Having said that, nearly half the downloads of Mosflm are for the Windows
version - but I have no figures on how many people actually use it, having
got hold of a copy! In my hands, it works as well as on the other
platforms. YMMV.
If your home institution really wants you to drop Macs, then I think you
have to insist on Linux with proper support - but that costs salaries!
Just my two ha'porth.
My home institution, in effort to cut costs, is making an effort to push
those of us on Macs onto PCs. Up till now they have been very generous
via a lease program for computer hardware, but that is changing given the
current economics. The institution currently does not support Linux so
we
are limited to Mac and Windows OS.
We certainly make use of William Scotts crystallography on OS X (thanks
so much!) so our main argument is that we would have far more support
"out there" for crystallography on the Mac than we would have for on
Windows. But to be fair (and hopefully bolster our argument) I should
find out if that is true. I did not find an equal web support page for
Windows.
A volunteer survey will be distorted (probably by Mac fanboys like me) so
I am asking for peoples best guesstimate as to what % use of Mac,
Windows, or Linux is out there for data processing and model building.
Our core programs are coot, o, pymol, cns, and ccp4 but we certainly make
occasional use of other crystallography programs out there (solve,
epmr...)
Also what are the relative crystallography support for Mac vs. Windows.
Thanks in advance.
Todd
--
Todd M. Link
Assistant Professor
MD Anderson Cancer Center
Univ. of Texas
(713) 834-6394
