Opinions? You want opinions? On this mailing list? This one ought to keep us going until the new year.

As for Fedora v. Ubuntu, my opinion is that Fedora is better for a centrally managed system, whereas Ubuntu is perhaps more convenient for a single owner-operator.

Fedora uses the RPM system for software distribution. and it's easy to install a lot of pre-packaged libraries and applications, including Coot and Pymol. If you do stereo, installation of the nVidia proprietary drivers is easy enough using the RPMFusion repository. The "akmod-nvidia" module rebuilds the driver automatically for a kernel upgrade.

But as for robustness? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. I can't use that word in the same sentence as Fedora. It is Red Hat's "bleeding edge" product, where they introduce all the latest, greatest bugs. Fedora 15 and 16 do not have a graphical application for managing system services, because they just switched to systemctl and do not have all the details worked out yet.

A current issue in the Linux community is desktops. Fedora switched from Gnome 2 to Gnome 3 in their previous release (15). G3 has a whole bushel of bugs and some nonintuitive "features." Ubuntu switched from Gnome to their own "Unity" desktop, which has sent some users fleeing to the Mint distribution.

I am just now contemplating a switch in the opposite direction, from Fedora to Scientific Linux 6. Like CENTOS, SL is a repackaging based on the Red Hat Enterprise source code, and is FREE. It has backing from some of the big physics labs, including CERN and Fermilab.

The price of stability is that you don't get all the latest stuff. In SL6.1, the current version of Firefox is 3.6.24, and the image rendering is SLOW. I am wondering if I want to go back that far in time.

Also, SL does not have their own bugzilla. If you encounter a bug, they tell you to take it to RedHat. You can imagine the finger-pointing circles that is going to lead to.

On 12/21/2011 03:29 PM, Paul Kraft wrote:

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hello,

I'm considering upgrading my linux software from CENTOS5 to perhaps Fedora or UBUNTO. Does anyone have an opinion about the best linux version to upgrade to for not only CCP4 but also for general robustness and for the best standard apps..Thanks

Paul

Dr. Paul Kraft
Structural Biologist
cell 586-596-2770
email: [log in to unmask]
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