Hi,

I'm a Fedora fan myself. I only recently needed to upgrade (i-e 
reinstall) from FC8 to FC16 because the latest Coot wouldn't run on 
FC8 anymore. I didn't upgrade to FC17 because NX (No Machine) 
wouldn't work anymore. I guess that in terms of release stability 
RHEL and Scientific Linux might be good choices. Support for older FC 
versions is limited or non-existent, but if you buy a new machine 
then you need to install a current OS version anyway. My major 
problem is that now many people start using 64bit Linux, some 
crystallographic programs are still distributed as 32bit only and 
sometimes they don't run at all on a 64bit platform.

A lot of people in my Institute use Ubuntu. It is easy to configure 
until you start wanting to customize your X-display (multiple 
screens, stereo) then it becomes a nightmare.

Cheers,

Pedro.

At 16:45 17-01-2013, Roger Rowlett wrote:
>IMO, unless you just like upgrading your OS on a frequent basis and 
>the migraines that go with it, choose some sort of LTS 
>(long-term-support) release. Currently I'm using Ubuntu 12.04 LTS 
>(good for 5 years), but CentOS or Mint would be good choices, too, 
>and that is what I considered when I upgraded from my last LTS 
>distribution. Ubuntu (at least for now) makes it easy to configure 
>hardware and is a popular known quantity for protein 
>crystallographic software. I had too many hardware compatibility 
>issues with Fedora about 5 years ago and gave up trying to maintain it.
>
>Cheers,
>
>_______________________________________
>Roger S. Rowlett
>Gordon & Dorothy Kline Professor
>Department of Chemistry
>Colgate University
>13 Oak Drive
>Hamilton, NY 13346
>
>tel: (315)-228-7245
>ofc: (315)-228-7395
>fax: (315)-228-7935
>email: [log in to unmask]
>
>On 1/17/2013 11:33 AM, David Roberts wrote:
>>I'm sorry to re-hash this issue, but I just wanted to know what the 
>>present general consensus is on linux flavors.  I teach a 
>>crystallography class every 2 years, and I have a small cluster of 
>>computers running fedora, but the deal is that by the time I get 
>>around to my class, fedora has routinely gone up at least 2 levels 
>>since my last upgrade, meaning that the latest software and things 
>>are difficult at best to load on.
>>
>>I'm OK with any linux, I just want one that will be able to run the 
>>majority (if not all) of the typical crystallography packages (cns, 
>>ccp4, coot, etc...).  I also would like one that works well with 
>>nfs and local file sharing.  I can upgrade fedora, no problem, but 
>>I thought I may branch out if others think there are better flavors out there.
>>
>>Thanks so much
>>
>>Dave Roberts

Industry and Medicine Applied Crystallography
Macromolecular Crystallography Unit
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