This is the first time I see a discussion about this issue in science. To Answer to Pete...KDE and Gnome are user friendly and ergonomic windowing systems and nowadays major Linux Distributions make using these MUCH easier than some years ago. We have both, OSX and Linux workstations in our lab, but for computational needs you would have to buy a Mac Pro workstation that is expensive compared to the PC counterpart. Else on cheaper iMacs you can not do heavy calculations, the system is not made for this.
Desktop needs like grant writing are greatly improved now with openOffice and for Microsoft fans with wine + Microsoft Office. But in the end I really have to agree with Nicholas. People tend to stigmatize Linux as a user unfriendly and unusable system for every day tasks. This is completely wrong and it would be nice if people would give a try to good distributions like Suse 11.1 or Ubuntu, that are very easy to install and maintain. Best wishes. Peter On Sat, 2 May 2009 11:50:56 +0100, mb1pja <p.artym...@sheffield.ac.uk> wrote: > .. but OSX gives you Unix AND you can run Word /Powerpoint without > rebooting. And you get a user-friendly ergonomic windowing system that > kicks the **** out of XP/Vista/KDE/Gnome... > > best wishes > > Pete > > > > On 2 May 2009, at 11:32, Nicholas M Glykos wrote: > >> Dear All, >> >> We confuse scientific computing with the individual scientists' >> computing >> needs: just because a scientist has to write a grant application using >> word, does not make windows a platform suitable for scientific >> computing >> (or anything else for that matter). Using computing machines for doing >> science boils down to actually using computing machines to compute >> things, >> and for that you need a proper open-source, production-oriented, >> stable >> programming environment, ie. GNU/Linux. What individual scientists >> prefer >> for satisfying their desktop needs is interesting, but, at least to my >> mind, largely irrelevant. >> >> My twopence, >> Nicholas >> >> >> -- >> >> >> Dr Nicholas M. Glykos, Department of Molecular Biology >> and Genetics, Democritus University of Thrace, University Campus, >> Dragana, 68100 Alexandroupolis, Greece, Tel/Fax (office) >> +302551030620, >> Ext.77620, Tel (lab) +302551030615, http://utopia.duth.gr/~glykos/ -- Peter Schmidtke ---------------------- PhD Student at the Molecular Modeling and Bioinformatics Group Dep. Physical Chemistry Faculty of Pharmacy University of Barcelona
