Not to surprisingly much of the response had been go linux. I was trying to head off that advice with the "university doesn't support Linux". And if I was more of a real man (but sadly it is not so, but I try to wear my girly-man credentials with as much pride as I can muster) I would go completely down that path as it seems most of the programs really are running on the unix kernel underneath the OS.
And as Mark says we are doing more than "just" crystallography - writing papers and grants, preparing figures, communicating to the rest of the university and world etc so it really is a choice of which will be our two main systems. Currently we have a younger student immersed in all things computer who could probably get all of this going on linux and maybe by the time he has left this old dog will have learned enough. Beyond that we really have pretty good IT support and institutional software so I thoroughly enjoy making a call to IT, asking them to handle our problem so that I can get back into lab (or read the ccp4BB). I was hoping that there would be some evidence out there of 50% linux, 40% Mac and 10% Windows and therefore not have to fully rest on the argument that in the lab we have so many years of computer experience/familiarity in all the senior people and that is going to require time and retraining to be equally proficient on a new system. Their attitude sometime feels like "we've already paid for your time, but we haven't paid for the computers, so lets extract the $ shortage from your time" without considering how that lost time will impact our ability to produce results, which is how we (and they) get our money. In reality we won't switch from Macs because of the groups collective knowledge with that system. I'm just trying to keep from being forced to have to buy all of our own hardware. Yes we have been lucky with the universities support in the past, but those are part of the things done by the institution to lure us to Texas - my apologies in advance to all texans :-). Thanks already to all have chipped in their 2 cents. Todd On 5/1/09 12:17 PM, "Simon Kolstoe" <s.kols...@ucl.ac.uk> wrote: Hi Todd, I've found, in two institutions I have now worked for, that the tradeoff is between IT support and the hardware/software you want to use. When our group moved institutions recently our new IT department told us that they would only support managed desktops on windows machines. We told them that wasn't good enough so they said "fine run your own network" which we now do. The downside is that we have to fix all problems ourselves, but the upside is that we have almost complete freedom. This is slowly leading to people getting apple laptops (through the apple educational store) and then configuring the crystallography software themselves. The bottom line is that Linux is just slightly too complicated for someone who is only a part time computer geek whereas both the flexibility and ease of use offsets the price penalty of using OSX. Mind you the only money we have for computers is from grants which probably gives us a bit more flexibility than any arrangement where the institution provides the machines. But again, I am not certain that a "free" $500 Linux box from my university would convince me to spend hours battling with dependencies! Simon On 1 May 2009, at 17:50, mjvdwo...@netscape.net wrote: Todd, Once upon a time I studied at an institution of higher learning. Its specialty is (and was) the education of and participation in medical sciences (I guess that could be an oxymoron, sorry). With that comes the securely keeping and sharing (as needed) of patient data. The institutional bureaucrats decided that Novell token ring networks were the best suited for that purpose and that, on the other hand, TCP/IP was inherently insecure, so they were going to "do away with TCP/IP networks". Shock was on the face of the workers. All academic and scientific networks need TCP/IP. The same thing was done as Bill says: we had to go in and argue that we didn't work for the computer and network people, but they worked for us. I can't remember if we did this - this was long before the time of ssh and sftp- long ago, but today I would bring up the argument of how much grant money and overhead money (which pays for the computer and network people) scientists bring in and that without the proper tools, these things cannot be perpetuated. It would seem to me that you cannot run crystallography efficiently (!) on one platform alone (no matter which one you choose). Some tasks, like grant writing, are easily done on some platforms (windows or Mac, but not Unix/Linux) etc. So the driving force should be "what needs to be done" and "how to best do it". With that should come the realization that making you as a scientist less efficient will translate into less ability to attract funds (because funds are competitive), which does not affect only you, but the entire institution. Things should not be and are not all about money, but that argument always works - hit them in the pocket book and they will reconsider. There are ways of cutting costs without doing away with capabilities. You can have groups of people who use Windows and have support for that. At the same time you can have other groups of people who use Macs with support for that. And you can make a rule that if you want to be different from everyone in your group, you will belong (for computing needs only) to the other group. That is how our University tries to run things. Mark -----Original Message----- From: William G. Scott <wgsc...@chemistry.ucsc.edu> To: CCP4BB@JISCMAIL.AC.UK Sent: Fri, 1 May 2009 9:39 am Subject: Re: [ccp4bb] Computer hardware and OS "survey" Hi Todd: One option on Windows is to install Ubuntu in a mode that lets it run nested as a guest in a window within the host operating system. This is now one of the options on the (free) Ubuntu install CD. I've actually not tried it, so I can't tell you how good it is, but my guess is that it works in a way that is very similar to VMware of Parallels on OS X. But if you already have made the investment in OS X hardware, I really would recommend standing your ground on this. The main arguments to make, I believe, are the following: 1. Scientists really need to have ready access to unix-based operating systems. OS X and Linux are two such variants, but the main arguments in favor of each are the same. I'm flattered you liked my website, but frankly I don't think its existence is a compelling argument. (In fact, I made the thing originally as a publicly accessible log/whine of my trials and tribulations in a do-it-yourself sys admin environment. You could point out that if an idiot like me can do this, anyone can.) You could probably get by with work-around solutions on Windows, but why should you be forced to hobble yourself. 2. Your institutional bureaucrats should not, as a matter of principle, dictate to you what your computer or other equipment needs are. They are supposed to work for you, not vice-versa. As pointed out, you probably only really need their IT support to give you network access. You should be able to work with whatever operating system your needs, tastes and ethics dictate. (The idea that the institution would force you to use an operating system that has been the subject of US Department of Justice litigation and would simultaneously discourage you from using Linux, a Free Software alternative, is particularly troubling). Happy May Day. Time to raise the black flag and start slitting throats. Bill On May 1, 2009, at 7:40 AM, Link,Todd M wrote: > 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 > ________________________________ Can't afford a new spring wardrobe? Go shopping in your closet instead <http://www.stylelist.com/spring-fashion/spring-style/shopping-in-your-closet?ncid=emlweusstyl00000001> ! -- Todd M. Link Assistant Professor MD Anderson Cancer Center Univ. of Texas (713) 834-6394
