Another consideration, since you've already decided on a Mac Pro, is to get Parallels (a commerical virtualization package for OS X). It will allow you to run all the Linux and Windows Distributions you want on the Mac Pro. Plus, if you wait until late Jan. to purchase the machine, it will probably have 2 Quad-core Xeons in it... that's 8 cores which is very well suited to virtualization. Load that thing up with (third party!) RAM and you'll have all the hardware you need for Intel Core 2 testing.
On 12/13/06, Fernando Perez <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On 12/13/06, William Stein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > No. But timing and performance are primarily hardware issues > > not flavor-of-linux issues. Vmware would *only* be used to > > provide access to a range of Linux disributions for build testing > > (and this could already be set up on sage.math). For performance > > testing VMware wouldn't be used. > > I've had limited, but extremely positive experiences with VMWare (keep > in mind it's free-as-in-beer now). It's easy to set up each image > with a dedicated IP on a private subnet and have a user-accessible > startup script that does something like: > > start_vmware_$OSFLAVOR > sleep($BOOT_TIME) > ssh $VIRTUAL_IP sage_test > ssh $VIRTUAL_IP sudo shutdown > > This way, using a big machine with fast disks, 4 or more cores and > gobs of RAM will give you an always-on build/test farm that can do > multi-OS tests far more conveniently than anything else out there. > > I can't speak for Xen (never used it, I'm sure it's good too), but I'm > a MAJOR fan of virtualization technologies these days. They really > cut a lot of pain out of many common problems, and they beat dual > booting by a million miles (unless you need direct OpenGL or other > such hardware access, which is not the case here). > > Cheers, > > f > > > > -- ----------------------------------------------------------- Jason Worth Martin Asst. Prof. of Mathematics James Madison University http://www.math.jmu.edu/~martin phone: (+1) 540-568-5101 fax: (+1) 540-568-6857 "Ever my heart rises as we draw near the mountains. There is good rock here." -- Gimli, son of Gloin --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://sage.scipy.org/sage/ and http://modular.math.washington.edu/sage/ -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
